Getting a new website indexed is important to your SEO efforts. If a page is not indexed then there is absolutely no chance of driving SEO traffic to that page. Search engines use spiders that crawl from page to page using links to navigate around the Internet in order to find new pages to index. While search engine submission was once one of the preferred methods of attracting the spiders, it is now an archaic practice that no longer provides the kind of results that you want for your website.

How To Get Indexed

There are essentially two ways to get a website indexed – the generation of an inbound link or the submission of a sitemap. Getting a link require that the link be from a page that has already been indexed. Depending on the indexing frequency of that page, the search engine spiders will visit it again and subsequently follow the new link to your page. This is the desired method of being indexed in the eyes of the search engines because it is the one that most closely matches the way that the spiders operate.

The Old Technique Of Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission was once one of the first steps in SEO but it had some major drawbacks. Even after submission it could and regularly did take several months for Google especially to index a website. The sheer volume of pages that needed indexing were largely responsible although older indexing techniques were nowhere near as streamlined as the modern process. Eventually, search engine submission because a dead SEO practice with no benefit.

The Modern Equivalent – Sitemap Submission

Sitemap submission could be considered the modern equivalent of search engine submission. Rather than entering your site URL and clicking submit you instead compile a text based sitemap that is Google compliant and then submit this through their suite of online Webmaster tools. In terms of SEO indexing, this leads to the quick identification and location of your website and your pages can be indexed in a matter of hours rather than months.

Search Engine Submission Is Dead

Some sites still offer search engine submission as a viable addition to your SEO campaign but it offers no benefit to any SEO efforts. You don’t gain any type of preferential treatment in any respect and it’s quite likely that your site will be indexed naturally long before Google deploys any kind of spider based on a submission in this way. Submit a sitemap or generate an inbound link in preference.

SEO And Indexing

Indexing is a critical early step in the SEO process because until your pages are all fully indexed you can not truly benefit from your efforts. Once a page is indexed you should begin to turn your attention to building links for that page using the keywords that you researched at the very beginning of your SEO campaign because over time this will help to boost your ranking and therefore generate more traffic for the pages of your website.

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