What's the difference between Indexed and Ranked on Google
I often read in live chat newbies aren't sure what these terms mean.
When you build a new website, it appears as published on the world wide web the Internet. It has an address. ie mywealthyaffiliate.com. That is all that has happened when you publish your first post. it has an address
The Next Step
The next step is Google Search Console or GSC. When you submit a site to the Google search console, you are saying.
"Hey, there is someone moving into this address; come over and see me some time."
Google sends out little bots or robots to find you. It wants to search for new web content every day. So it sends out a Search party and finds you.
That part of the process is called Indexing.
Google has found your site. It didn't know it existed before now the postman can call. Indexing just means Google has found you. If you have written an article with the keywords
"Healthy food for big dogs."
It now knows it has to reference or put that article somewhere on the Internet map.
As Google doesn't know where to put you because it doesn't know anything about you. It puts you on the last page of all the articles that have the keyword "Healthy food for big dogs. "So if there 127,458 articles with that keyword, you are at the end of it.
Google can't really do anything else. There is no history of that article. When a second article is written, then the second stage of the process kicks in Ranking
So the day after the first article has published, you start researching a second article using the keywords "how much exercise do big dogs need"
Three days later, you publish it. You send a message to the Google search console to go fetch (every pun intended). If it has found the first article, Google now thinks.
"Ahh, that's interesting - this looks as though it is a site that might be talking about big dogs. We will keep an eye out for this, and it sends out a bot more often to find your content.
This illustrates two really important aspects of the training.
The first point is to have a targeted audience and speak to people with one interest. In this case, Google is starting to get a pattern about big dogs.
If your second article is about "What is healthy parrot food?" then Google starts to think this is about healthy food.
However, if your second article is about how much water does rose bushes need, then Google has a dilemma.
Human beings, by their very nature, categorize things because the actual processing power of the brain is actually quite small. It is processing thousands of visual, auditory, and sensory information a second. It takes a shortcut with information.
Google does the same thing. It is not sure what to do with these two articles, so in effect, it parks them in the middle of a black hole of lost sites on the Internet.
The second part of the training is to be consistent. It doesn't matter how many articles you post. It is more important to be consistent. Don't post an article a day for seven days and then do nothing. Don't post seven articles in one day unless you are going to post seven articles in one day EVERY DAY.
Google sees a pattern in terms of posting ad also a common theme emerging. It can now do something with this. It begins a process known as Ranking. It gives your article a page rank. Most browsers have a default setting of 10 articles on the page when you search.
The Ranking is where magic HAPPENS.
Google thinks this is showing the beginnings of a website; it doesn't know whether it is going to be consistent. There are only two articles. It takes at least three for Google to work out a consistency pattern. It then starts to give you page rank, something Larry Page, a Google employee, invented. I am not going to go down memory Lane here. The page rank has nothing to with the guy's name. It is about how important Google feels that the article is.
When you search and get the first page, you normally settle for the information on that page. You may well drill down with the advance search function, but I will put on the fact that you won't very often go past page 2.
Certainly, you won't go to page 12,546, which is where your first article live.
The more pages are indexed, the more seriously Google starts to look if there is a possibility of an authority site being formed.
So be pleased when you get the email telling you the page/post has been indexed. It is an exciting part of the process. Carry on with your keyword research and write consistently.
Eventually you will get one article ranked on page 1 . it does depend how long this will take. If there is a lot of competition, it may take years, or not happen at all. Remember there are only ten slots. This is why the training encourages you to go for what is called "low hanging fruit" These are keywords that will rank fairly quickly. once you have several articles on page 1 you start to get real human traffic to your glog , people finding you through an organic search .
Then sit back and wait for the magic to really happen whilst still writing consistently. If you follow these steps and ask questions when you are stuck, you can't fail to be a super affiliate.
Recent Comments
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So, just to clarify, when I go to Research tab up top, then to Site Rank and check my website, when it says that I am 1, then the jumping up and down and celebrating I did was the right thing to do, correct? I have also gone through and checked each blog post title and get numbers from 1 to not ranked at all. And, when I have gone back, I have seen where the numbers move up and down in rank.
The key is checking correctly. You don’t search by the full blog post title, you search by the focus keyword exactly the same as your audience would do in Google 👍🏼
Gotcha. So, when I did look up, and it would say for example one of my post was position 3 page 1, that is not correct because I should have been looking under just the keywords? I am not trying to be a smart-alek, I truly am asking because I want to know.
Let’s say you were opening a new seafood restaurant called Courtney’s Crawfish and Shrimp Jamboree of Deliciousness. You’d probably want to see where it’s listed after someone makes a search for “good seafood in [your city]” right? That’s the same principle here. You want to rank for the actual keywords your audience would search for. If you make a search for “Courtney’s Crawfish and Shrimp Jamboree of Deliciousness” of course you’ll be listed near the top because it’s an exact match, but that’s not a realistic search someone would make. Now I’m hungry 👍🏼
First, search with a private window. If you search with your normal browser, the Serps will find your article even if it is not ranked.
my advice is don't even worry about it until you have 20 articles published. Then you can go back and tweak; nothing is set in stone. The primary thing for a new website is to get written content on there
This is so helpful! Google search console is telling me my articles are indexed but I can't find them in search so I think I am very very far down the options. I'll just keep being consistent and keep my fingers crossed.
One slightly odd thing is Google Search Console is telling me my URLs are indexed but it's been a month since I had the joyful WA email that confirms this. Any ideas on why that could be?
Your websites will always be indexed that's what the search engines do they send out little bots all the time to look for new content. Don't get hung up about being indexed it's not important it's being ranked it's important. The only way you can go towards being ranked can help it is to write consistently and post consistently
This article is why I like having wonderful fun people like you in my network to glean from. You made this super simple to understand. Now, when I see a question on this subject in know where to look to give them a better answer than I can give.
You Rock!!
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So when creating new articles, do you stay consistent in talking about that one topic like “food for big dogs” and dedicate your website to just that “big dogs” topics or can I go into a variety of things in that same pet Niche. Like “food for small cats” would that mess up index. If I’m making sense..?