Website Indexing, Ranking and Google Analytics

bytommo1968

3.8K followers

7 years ago

Indexing on Google

What I see asked here at Wealthy Affiliate more often than anything else is, "how do I know my website is indexed?" A good question for a beginner and here is the answers. How to know your indexed

The site:mywebsite.com search term in google is a simple and quick result to see what is indexed as Labman explained but there are other uses for the search term.

Example if you are searching a large site you can search for terms or keywords to see if they are indexed for them. To do this put the keyword before it (my keyword site:mywebsite.com)

Remember to leave no gaps between the [site:] and the [domain] it should be site:mywebsite.com. As you can see from the screenshot I did a search of WA for indexing and it threw out a plethora of results. A good way to search a huge website like Wealthy Affiliate.

There are loads of other operators to use in google search terms for example you can use + or - to add extra terms or return a list without a term. The full list can be found her in case you missed it from Labmans post above. Search operators

When checking out a competitor this a good tool to see what they are indexed for on certain terms to see if you can replicate and beat them in the rankings.

How to get Indexed Quickly

On top of the above question "am I indexed", knowing how to do the task properly can speed up the process and get your traffic moving quicker.

Here is some training on how to get the task done quicker. Getting indexed quickly by Boomergp08 and also More training on indexing which shows that doing the main things properly you will get indexed.

As a guide new sites do take a bit longer to get noticed so doing these tips will speed it up. Once you have been getting noticed and if you are posting readily you should get indexed more quickly, sometimes within the hour.

A few things to remember when trying to get your post not only indexed but eventually ranked which is the aim at the end of the day is to make sure you include your keyword in a few places.

Ideally it should be in the title, the first paragraph the image, the meta tag and meta description.

Jay mentioned this in a recent webinar and there are many who say you don't need it if you have the "All in one SEO" plugin installed.

I was in that boat but Jay makes a good case that the text beside your link in Google is important for that first impression and if you can convince people to click the link then you have completed the first basic task of getting traffic to the website.

The problem with the All in one SEO is it takes text from your written content, usually the first sentence to fill the meta fields out and they don't always show up well on Google. That's unless you write your content in such a way to use that feature that is.

Analytics is overrated?

One of the main wastes of time I see from new members is using Google Analytics.

I know it's important as a newbie to see things growing and I know how exciting it is to see increases in traffic, CTR's and sales but there are more important things to do on a new website than look at data.

My advice concentrate on content curation and once a week give analytics a look for a few minutes to see how things are going. There is not enough data in the beginning to make any sense anyway.

You need steady traffic before you can start to use it to test new strategies to sales pages etcetera. Google Analytics an be a good tool once you are established to see where your visitors are coming from, how they behave on your website and how quickly they bounce (or leave) your website.

On top of that you can set goals and a whole lot of other data analysis but as mentioned it will suck up a lot of your time and that time is precious and better spent on your website especially at the beginning.

OK thats me, feel free to comment or discuss the implications of these points.

Mark