Before your content can be indexed, it must first be crawled. How long it takes for Google to fully crawl your website depends on your crawl budget, or the amount of attention Google devotes to your site.
After it has been completely crawled, the next phase is indexing. These factors have a significant impact on indexing speed:
- The reliance of the website on client-rendered JavaScript.
- Your content’s caliber.
- The size of the site.
As a general rule, we typically estimate:
- 3–4 weeks for less than 500-page websites.
- Two to three months for websites with between 500 and 25,000 pages.
- Four to twelve months for websites with over 25,000 pages.
Obviously, each website is unique and is handled differently by Google; therefore, these estimates should be taken with a grain of salt. Google has the final say in all matters pertaining to SEO.
Google’s process for indexing in brief
In order to provide an explanation for how long it takes Google to index websites, it is necessary to discuss what goes on during the indexing phase as well as the two phases that come before it.
Phase 1: Discovery
Your website must first come to the attention of the search engine. Keep in mind that you should make it as simple as possible for search engine crawlers to learn about your website and all of your URLs by optimizing your website for spidering. Acquiring backlinks, utilizing an XML sitemap, and, in the case of Google, manually requesting the indexing of URLs through Google Search Console are all viable options for accomplishing this goal.
Phase 2: Crawling
Your website must first be crawled by Google. During this phase, Googlebot will forward any information that it has discovered to the processes that are responsible for indexing. Check to see that there are no obstacles on your website that could prevent it from locating the important content there.
Phase 3: Indexing
And last but not least, Google will process the content of your website while it is in the indexing phase. At this stage, the following factors can cause Google’s indexing of your website to move at a more glacial pace: an over-reliance on JavaScript; poor content quality; and an inadequate internal link structure.
Help Google find your site more quickly
There are many different ways to let Google know that you have added a new website or new pages, or that updates have been made to URLs that have already been indexed in the search engine.
Submit a sitemap in XML format to Google Search Console
You can notify Google that you have a new website or new content by using an XML sitemap that you have submitted through your Google Search Console account. This is a method that is both efficient and effective.
A list of URLs that you want Google to crawl and index is included in the XML sitemap that you create. Instead of submitting each individual URL one at a time, you can use it to make suggestions to Google about which URLs it should crawl and index in whole batches.
Your XML sitemaps ought to refresh themselves automatically after each time you make a change. Google will always have the most up-to-date information regarding the location of your website and will be able to recrawl pages as necessary.
Google Search Console lets you add individual URLs
You can submit individual URLs using the Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool in addition to indicating all of the important URLs on your site by using an XML sitemap. This tool is available on Google Search Console.
You can expedite the process of discovery, crawling, and indexing by submitting the URLs of the pages you want indexed. However, it should be noted that just like with everything else associated with Google, there are no guarantees.
Look for inbound links (backlinks)
Backlinks are an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO). They not only assist search engines in discovering new content but also act as a vote for the content that has been discovered.
Because of this, you should devote some of your time and resources to establishing relevant links from websites that have an adequate amount of authority in order to boost the robots’ ability to find your website.
Solid internal links
Google will be able to quickly crawl all of the content on your website and understand the hierarchy of your website if the website’s internal link structure has been carefully considered.
Market your content
Even though Google has never publicly admitted that performance on social media affects a website’s visibility in search results, successfully promoting your content on social media has a direct impact on that content’s organic performance. This is true despite the fact that Google has never officially admitted that social media performance affects website visibility in search results.
Regardless of whether or not you use social media, promoting your content is an essential component of content marketing. For a good number of years now, producing content of a high quality has not been sufficient on its own to move the needle. It is recommended that you devote at least the same amount of time to promoting your content as you did to producing that content.
