Increasing backlink indexing
10 Ways to Index Backlinks Faster in 2024
Dhruv Mehta
December 26, 2023
Everyone wants to get on the first page of Google search results—the digital goldmine or, rather Holy Grail companies aspire for.
But do you know how to make Google index your backlinks quickly?
Yes, there is a science to it—one which we will explore in this comprehensive guide. Let’s go!
What is Backlink Indexing in SEO?
Backlink indexing is not a much-discussed topic in SEO circles, but it should be.
Data estimates that “the #1 result in Google averages 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10.”
Properly indexing your backlinks is crucial for driving organic traffic to your website.
The entire concept revolves around understanding Google’s functioning.
Essentially, it’s about how Google recognizes and uses your site’s backlinks in its ranking process.
Google’s bots scour the internet to find new web pages and the links between them, known as backlinks. They catalog these backlinks to understand the relationships and importance of different websites.
This helps Google determine which sites are valuable and should be ranked higher in search results. The process of identifying and storing these backlinks is essential for how Google assesses and ranks websites.
10 Ways to Get Your Backlinks Indexed Faster
1. Create High-Quality Backlinks.
The most tried-and-tested way of getting indexed faster is to get authoritative sites (like the New York Times, for example) to backlink to your site.
Reportedly, these websites get their blog pages indexed as soon as the content is published. This means you won’t have to take the headache of indexing backlinks yourself.
When zeroing in on the sites, make sure that they are relevant to your niche. This will also bolster your link profile.
If you are looking to outsource your SaaS link building activities , Clickass can be the game-changer you need.
Pro tip: You can use this free domain authority checker tool to view which websites have exceptional DA scores.
2. Ping the Linking Page URLs.
If the Google Search Console isn’t pinging the linking page ( the page that has your backlink ) quickly enough for you, you can do it by using a free pinging tool.
Here’s how it works: The pinging tool will send a reminder to Google. Take for instance, the example of PrePostSEO . Here’s what its UI looks like:
Simply paste the URL of the page which you need to ping:
Then, hit the “Start Pinging” button to view the Ping Status as shown below:
Some other most widely-used pinging tools include:
3. Cross-Check the Linking Page
This strategy is all about ensuring that the linking page is adhering to the standard link building criteria. If it doesn’t meet the criteria, Google will not index it.
The first thing you’ll need to do is check if the link is “follow” or “no follow.” Also, check if it has the noindex tag or not.
A quick refresher: Nofollow links are not useful in contributing to the PageRank—they won’t help pages to appear higher within the search results.
We’ve already covered how you can find out whether the link on the page has the ”nofollow” attribute or not.
So here we’ll talk about how to ensure whether the page is not no-index listed.
Remember, the “noindex” metatag indicates to the search engines that it won’t be able to add the page to the search index.
Here are the steps you need to follow to identify the noindex metatag:
Step 1: Start by opening the source of the URL page.
Step 2: Go to the header and see if it includes the “noindex” robots meta tag.
Here are a few tips that can make finding the “noindex” tag easy:
- Browse through the entire HTML of the page.
- Instead of going for a manual search, hit control + F to identify the “noindex” tag.
Make sure the link in your article is related to the topic. Google might not index or optimize it if it’s off-topic or copied from somewhere else.
To avoid this, your articles should be:
1) Long enough to be valuable, usually over 1,000 words,
2) Original and thoroughly researched, and
3) Have a clear beginning, end, and detailed main content.
4. Post Backlinks on Social Media and Forums.
Generally speaking, X [previously Twitter] is the platform to index backlinks quickly.
Google partnered with X in 2015 to index tweets in real-time. More importantly, Google considers X carousels as one of the most valuable SERP features.
In simple words, this means that if you tweet your backlinks, X will index backlinks and crawl them immediately.
But here’s the catch: Considering there are thousands of tweets every day, you can help Google in indexing backlinks by:
- Getting as many retweets, comments, and likes as possible
- Encouraging followers to like tweets that contain your backlinks
- Getting organic replies in the hundreds, if possible
The more likes, tweets, responses, comments, and engagement on a tweet, the higher the chances of Google indexing it.
You must also help Google to index backlinks on other platforms such as Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Quora. Keep posting your backlink URLs where relevant and improve your chances of Google crawling—and indexing—them.
5. Use Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds.
You must also use RSS feeds to enable users (as well as search engines) to stay updated with your content.
As per Google’s John Mueller, “The RSS feed is really something we see as more of a technical help to crawl and index the content a bit better.”
Here’s why using RSS feeds can work wonders for your indexing backlinks: The RSS feeds across directories and aggregators get crawled routinely. This means faster crawling and indexing for your backlinks.
You can leverage an RSS feed generator to build your RSS feed and send it to directories.
6. Leverage Third-Party Indexing Services.
There are numerous backlink indexer tools you can use for indexing backlinks quickly.
Some of the most popular tools include:
- IndexMeNow: IndexMeNow is a backlink indexer tool that offers reliable Indexing Experts who will assist you in easily (and quickly) indexing your links. As per the website, the brand’s indexer will start working immediately and give you results within 1 hour of you submitting the links:
Beyond IndexMeNow, there are other noteworthy third-party indexing services you might consider, such as:
Each of these services offers unique features to aid in efficiently indexing your backlinks.
7. Use Google Search Console (GSC) URL Inspection Tool.
GSC’s URL Inspection tool helps in two ways:
- It offers information about Google’s indexed version of a specific page.
- It enables users to test whether a URL might be indexable or not.
To use this tool, follow these steps:
Step 1: To request Google to index a backlink, first, access the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console.
Step 2: enter the URL where your backlink is located and inspect it.
Step 3: After this, use the ‘Request Indexing’ option to prompt Google to re-crawl the page.
Pro Tip:
To submit URLs to Google Search Console for indexing, you need to verify that you own the domain. If you’re looking to index a backlink from another website, you’ll need to ask the owner or webmaster of that site to carry out this process, as only verified owners can submit their site’s URLs for indexing.
8. Post Backlinks to Your Own Website.
As counterintuitive as it seems, posting the backlink URL anywhere else on your website actually works.
This strategy is particularly useful if you want to use GSC’s URL Inspection Tool without knowing who created the backlink.
Once you are inside GSC, all you need to do is enter the backlink URL into the Inspection Tool, and click on the “Request Indexing” button:
That’s it. Get ready for Google’s bots to recrawl your website and rediscover the backlinks you just posted.
Pro tip: Once Google has checked (recrawled) your site and recognized a new backlink, you can immediately remove that backlink if you want to. This strategy allows you to manage how many backlinks your site has while also keeping up with how quickly Google notices (indexes) these backlinks.
9. Send a Video Sitemap to GSC.
Want to index new backlinks at once (and at scale)?
Try sending a video sitemap to Google Search Console—the only difference being you’ll need to add your backlink URL instead of adding a video.
But first, what is a video sitemap exactly?
A video sitemap refers to an XML sitemap. This sitemap contains data about all the videos that are hosted on your site.
The best part is that you can easily replace the video URLs with backlinks for lightning-fast indexing. Here’s how:
Step 1: Select a video of choice from YouTube/Vimeo. Then, embed it in any web page of your choosing.
Step 2: Head over to XML-Sitemaps to detect your embedded video and build a separate XML sitemap for it:
Step 3: Next, use a tool like Notepad to edit the sitemap. Here’s what you’ll need to do. Simply replace the URLs containing the tags with your backlink URLs.
Step 4: Once done, save the sitemap and navigate to the Google Search Console.
Step 5: In the sidebar menu, choose Index > Sitemaps, located on the left.
Step 6: Finally, you’ll need to upload your video sitemap to GSC. In doing so, Google’s algorithm will crawl—and index—all the backlink URLs within the edited sitemap.
10. Be Patient.
At the risk of sounding preachy, know that indexing backlinks is not something that happens overnight.
You need to understand the dynamics of inbound and outbound links.
You need to ensure your content is high-quality and relevant for the site being linked to.
You also need to implement the right backlink indexing strategy and engage in organic backlink management initiatives to get the desired results.
No matter which way you slice the cake, patience is everything! So wait at least a month before you start sweating it.
Also, don’t resort to link farming or other black hat link-building efforts, or else you risk getting penalized by Google.
Track—And Troubleshoot—Your Backlinks
The thing about backlinks is that they need to be monitored for indexing.
And if you want to know if your backlink is indexed or not, just do a Google Search of the exact URL of the content that includes your backlinks.
I wrote a guest post on NiceReply for my client “ClearOut.” We will now see if this post has been indexed or not by Google:
There you go. The corresponding page is appearing in the results.
Additionally, the client’s backlink is visible on the NiceReply page. This confirms that the backlinks in the post have been successfully indexed by Google
Pro tip: Check the Google cached version of the page. This helps to ensure Google has indexed the updated version of the page carrying your backlink.
But what happens if you find out that your backlink has not been indexed? In this case, you must:
- Assess it for underlying issues such as:
- Low-quality content
- Broken backlinks
- Improper redirects
- Search engine crawler’s inability to access your content due to robots.txt blocking
- Inaccurate canonical tags
This is why monitoring your backlinks must never take a back seat in your overall SEO journey.
Indexing Backlinks is the Stepping Stone to Your Site’s Success
Want to build a solid link-building strategy but don’t know where to begin?
Getting your hands on a backlink indexer tool is not going to be enough. You need to leverage the services of an expert who understands how backlink indexing works from the inside out and can execute link insertion strategically.
Connect with me to get high authority backlinks. With over 5+ years of experience, I’ve learned a trick or two to get your backlinks indexed efficiently and quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How long do backlinks take to index?
The time it takes for backlinks to be indexed by search engines can vary widely.
Typically, it can take a few days to several weeks. Factors influencing this timeframe include the quality and authority of the linking site and the efficiency of search engine crawlers. High-authority sites tend to have their backlinks indexed more quickly.
However, there’s no fixed timeline, and sometimes, certain backlinks may take even longer to get indexed.
2. Is there any SEO value in non-indexed links?
Non-indexed links generally do not contribute directly to SEO in terms of improving search rankings, as search engines like Google can’t consider them in their ranking algorithm if they’re not indexed.
However, they can still offer indirect value.
For example, non-indexed links might drive traffic to a site or increase brand exposure and credibility. Over time, this can lead to increased organic search presence and potentially more indexed backlinks from other sources.
3. Is indexing backlinks a good practice?
Yes, absolutely! You must index backlinks as they can:
- Make your links look more valuable and trustworthy in the eyes of Google
- Convince Google to index your links and ultimately improve your site’s SEO ranking
- Enhance your site’s search engine positioning when someone searches for a relevant topic
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