This post was originally written by Ken Shafer, past SEO Manager for Apartments.com.
We’ve all been there. You have this great piece of new content; a fresh article or updated information about a property or model type and you don’t want to wait for the search engines to take their sweet time finding it and getting it indexed. Lucky for us, Google has recently provided a couple of options for getting that content discovered a little quicker. You need a couple of things set up in order to take advantage of them.
The Essentials
Google’s Webmaster Tools provide you with detailed reports about your website’s visibility on Google. Simply, visit Google Webmaster Tools and follow the instructions to get it up and running.
Submitting Your New URL to Google
In the left-hand menu, expand the Diagnostics tab and click on “Fetch as Googlebot.”
When you get to this page, enter the URL for your new content:
You’ll see the URL “Pending” for a couple of minutes. When the status switches to “Success,” you’ll see a link that says “Submit to index.”
Click “Submit” on the pop-up and you’re all set! Remember to only submit URLs when they’re new or something has changed on them.
Bonus Tips!
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing’s webmaster tools also let you submit URLs.
1) Click “Index” at the top of the Dashboard
2) Select “Submit URLs” in the left-hand navigation
3) Paste your URLs and follow the instructions
Using Twitter
That’s right! You can use your Twitter account to help get new content indexed faster. It’s not 100% reliable, but it can work. Search engines are constantly crawling the stream of tweets looking for new content and links. This is done in almost real-time. If you tweet out your new URL, you have a good shot at getting it picked up and re-indexed by the search engines.
Now get out there and get indexed! If you’re having trouble getting started, let us know in the comments so we can help.
Have you used this tool before? Did you notice a jump in traffic afterward?
