If you’ve properly setup your website in Google Search Console or had someone else do it (hint, we offer SEO for photographer services!), Google will index your website on its own every so often. There’s no specific time period in which Google visits but it’s usually between 2 – 5 weeks unless Google has a visit to reason like you gained new backlinks or was linked elsewhere.
The issue with 2-5 weeks is that well, that’s a long time. I’m guessing if you just spent a few hours perfecting a new page or blog post, you want the benefit from your work sooner than later.
That’s where indexing comes in. Using Google Search Console and manually indexing your website will get it indexed in under 3 days in most cases.
In this guide, I’m going to teach you how to do it. And I bet I can do it in under 5 minutes. It’s really that easy.
Step 1 – Get Your URL
Grab your URL of the page you want indexed. This is the full URL, not just your domain. In our example, you’ll see I not only grabbed the domain name but the rest of the URL to my guide.
If you’re unsure, the easiest way to get this is to go to the page yourself and grab the whole URL from your browser URL window up top.
Step 2 – Insert The URL Into Google Search Console
Go to Google Search Console and you’ll see a URL bar that looks like the one in your browser. Put that full address into that bar and hit enter like I did below.
Step 3 – Let Google Scan And Analyze Your URL
Once you submit your URL, Google will analyze to page to ensure there’s no errors and it can actually index it. The last thing you’d want is to request crawling just for Google to send back an error a week later. Doing it this way will allow Google to alert you if there’s a problem now, instead of later. The scan usually takes up to a full minute so hang in there.
When the initial scan comes back positive, and it usually does, press the link that says REQUEST INDEXING.
Step 4 – Success
Once you see the box on the right, you’re all finished. The indexing request was submitted and you should expect it to be indexed in the next few days.
Annoyingly, Google will not alert you that your page was indexed so you’re going to have to look for it in Google to verify.
That’s it. You’re all finished. Best practice is to request a new index any time you add new content, pages, or alter your already existing content. It’s basically telling Google “Hey, I did something to my website, come check it out!”
