Tag Archives: search engine rankings

How to get your content indexed by Google faster after writing and publishing it?

The image shows the Google homepage, a crawler in the form of a spider and some random graphics

Get your content crawled and indexed faster by Google after writing and publishing it

You publish content on your website for multiple reasons but one of the main reasons is getting found on Google. To get found on Google, you need to rank. To rank, you need to first get indexed.

Based on the age of your website, the amount of content you have been publishing and the number of back links you have, indexing of a particular piece of content can take anywhere between two seconds to 2 weeks, and sometimes, even more.

When you have written and published new piece of content you naturally want it to be indexed by Google as fast as possible so that you can start getting traffic due to it. Although, whether you can generate traffic depends on your rankings but then again, rankings come into picture only when your content is indexed.

My new content usually gets indexed in a few seconds, but this is because I have been regularly publishing content for many years and the Google crawlers are constantly checking my website for new content (at least, I like to believe so).

Google is content hungry. It wants to index as much content as possible. When it is not indexing your content, it is only because it hasn’t yet been able to access it.

It is in the Google can access your content only when it visits your website. It can also access your content, crawl it and then index it when it comes across it somewhere else. All you need to do is, great right conditions for Google to be able to find your content.

Listed below are a few things you can do to make it easier for Google to find your new content.

Google Search Console URL inspector

Although the purpose of this tool is to inspect whether Google can access your link or not (sometimes the link might be blocking the crawlers due to some server problem or bad setting in robots.txt) you can also use it to request Google to index your link.

To be able to use the service, you must first set up your Google Search Console account and add your website as one of the properties that you plan to manage through it.

Google search console page crawling status

In the older Google Search Console version, it was a bit difficult to find the section that allows you to submit your URL, but the new version is quite friendly in this regard. At the top there is a text box that prompts you to inspect your URL using Google Search Console.

Depending on whether you link is already indexed or not, the Google Search Console interface allows you to request indexing. If you “Request Indexing”, your link is scheduled to get indexed faster.

Share your content on your social media and social networking profiles

Basically, what you want to do is, you want to create channels that will lead the Google crawler to your content. Wherever the Google crawler comes across your link, it is going to crawl it. So, the more you share your links/content, the greater is the chance of it being found by the Google crawler. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora and other such websites to cast as wide a net as possible.

Request other publishers to link to your latest content

Other bloggers and influencers won’t link to your content unless you add value to their websites or social networking profiles. Hence, it is necessary that when you publish content, when you are writing content, keep in mind whether people would like to link to it or not.

Publish content on websites like LinkedIn and Medium and from there, link to your content

Websites like LinkedIn and Medium are already well-indexed websites with most of their new content being indexed within microseconds. When you publish your posts there they are crawled and indexed almost immediately and when your posts are crawled and indexed over there, if the crawlers find the link to your website, they also crawl and index the content on your website.

Write content and publish as frequently as possible

You must convey to Google that you publish frequently, otherwise its crawlers don’t show much interest in your domain. Once its algorithms and the background artificial intelligence have learned that you are a frequent publisher, they start crawling your website frequently.

I have seen this with multiple websites. I was able to build traffic without approaching other publishers simply by pushing lots of content on my own websites. Eventually Google learned to crawl and index my content very fast.

These are some very quick ways of getting your content indexed fast by Google.

Content writing for humans means better SEO

The image urges you to write content for humans not for machines

Write content for humans not for machines

There is lots of talk about content marketing and content writing for humans. What does this mean? Aren’t we always writing for human beings? We’re not writing for cats and dogs, are we?

There is a reason why content writers and content marketers, and even SEO experts, advise you to focus on humans when writing content: most of the people seem to be writing for search engines because they believe that the most important thing to do is draw traffic from search engines.

Search engine traffic is important. If you don’t get targeted traffic, unless there is another channel that sends tons of traffic to your website, you are not going to get customers and clients. So, it goes without saying that focusing on your SEO is one of the most important marketing responsibilities you have while promoting your business online.

The problem is, improving SEO with content writing can turn into an obsession or an addiction because it gives you a high that in many cases, can be instant – it’s instant gratification. You have just published a blog post or an article and there you have it, it is already showing on the first page of search results. How thrilling.

Search engine ranking algorithms are past that stage when you could trick them into giving you better rankings. “Tricking”, though, doesn’t work these days and most of your content is ranked according to its quality and relevance, a majority of people still believe that SEO can be improved merely by including keywords without paying attention to the quality and relevance of the content being written.

Hence, the need to write content for humans and not for the ranking algorithms.

What is the difference between content writing for humans and for machines?

Again, I’m not saying everyone does that (because there is a higher level of awareness regarding this now) but while trying to improve search engine rankings, people often forget why they are writing. All they are bothered about is, improving their search engine rankings for their preferred keywords and search terms.

This image gives you an example of how people try to “optimize” their content for better SEO

The image demonstrates text in which someone goes overboard with optimization

Going overboard with optimization

Source.

What does content writing for machines mean?

Content writing for machines means writing simply to improve your SEO. It may or may not work, but here, your primary focus is to weave your text in such a manner that the search engine algorithm finds your text appealing and consequently, ranks it well.

It involves repeating your keywords a couple of times in the title of the web page for the blog post and then copiously using various keywords as simple text as well as hypertext, mostly indiscriminately throughout the body text.

Does it work?

Personally, I’m not sure. Sometimes in the search results, I’ve seen this working, but personally, I have never been able to benefit from it. My content ranks well only when I write well.

It isn’t advisable and it is strongly discouraged by reputed search engine experts, but still, you may find many search results that are of no value but are full of keywords and ranking well.

Why isn’t content writing for machines advisable?

Why do you want search engine traffic? You want people to come to your website or blog. Why do you want that? You want them to do business with you.

Do you think they are going to do business with you just because they are on your website or do you think they need to be convinced?

Have you ever spent money on a website where you cannot make sense of what is written over there or somewhere you don’t feel convinced?

I don’t think so.

Similarly, if you are merely focusing on improving your SEO and in the process, neglecting the quality and the relevance of your content, although you may get traffic from search engines, this traffic is not going to convert.

This is where content writing for humans plays an important part.

What does content writing for humans mean?

When you write content for humans, you focus on the message, you focus on the quality and the relevance of what you are writing rather than obsessing over SEO.

When you are writing for humans, you don’t completely ignore the SEO part, but your primary concern is to make your content engaging and meaningful. You want to provide useful information to your visitors so that they can make up their mind about doing business with you.

You spend your effort on quality. You do lots of research. You pack as much useful information as possible.

Then what about SEO?

If you simply focus on the subject at hand, your search engine rankings are automatically improved.

People are constantly asking questions to search engines (something like, “looking for the best content writer for my business”) and the job of the search engines is to provide the best answers to people.

Search engine ranking algorithms are constantly being improved to achieve that. The mathematicians and computer scientists working on these algorithms don’t want to be tricked into believing that something is good when it is not.

But at the same time, they want their algorithm to be able to recognise text patterns and calculate how important that piece of content is for a keyword.

Balancing between writing content for humans and machines

This can be achieved by writing your content primarily for humans, but at the same time using the language that they use with search engines.

For example, if you are looking for a professional content writer and if I want you to be able to find my link on Google and then come to my link and after reading what I have published, you should consider doing business with me, I should focus on talking about my abilities as a content writer rather than advising you on how to become an author like Shakespeare.

Although, maybe I’m trying to convince you that I’m as good as Shakespeare and hence, you should hire me as your content writer, and there is nothing wrong in presenting my services from that angle, your primary focus is not someone who writes like Shakespeare, but someone who can write professional content for you that can help you grow your business.

The point is, if I want to generate traffic from people who are looking for a content writer, then obviously I should have lots of content talking about content writing, content writer, SEO writer, SEO content, content marketing, and such, because this is how Google figures out that I have lots of content for these terms.

But I shouldn’t obsess over these terms just for the heck of it. I should carefully choose topics that talk about these search terms in a manner that they convince you that I’m a better content writer than someone else.

Why there is a need to constantly write and publish such topics?

Compulsion.

Personally, I feel I have covered whatever I needed to help people decide whether they want to hire me as their content writer or not.

As new content emerges, old content is pushed down. If new content is not published on the website, it begins to lose its search engine rankings no matter how exceptional the content is. Search engines like Google prefer fresh content, and fresh content on an ongoing basis.

Hence, I try to publish new content every week. But, though, I need to publish content regularly, it doesn’t mean I do it with total disinterest just as a chore. I take full interest. I pay special attention to the fact that if you are reading this, you are learning something, you are benefiting from it and you are able to implement my advice on your own content writing if you want.

This is how I maintain a balance between writing content for humans and the machines.

Is there a definitive way of ranking in Google’s featured snippets

Ranking in Google’s featured snippets is one of the best ways of getting a ton of traffic to your website, provided you get ranked for the right keywords and there is another link of yours appearing somewhere on the same page.

Nobody knows exactly why Google decides to rank your link. I have had some success getting some of my links ranked in this section; for example, look at this:

credible-content-showing-up-in-Google-snippets

This blog post contains lots of statistics and graphs to show how many more links Google has started including in the featured snippets section and how much more traffic these featured links draw from Google compared to those links that are not featured.

What are  upchart showing how many links are included in the featured snippets of Google

Google’s featured snippets

Just like any other content-based platform, Google is constantly coming up with ways to present relevant content attractively as well as purposefully.

Since more than 99% of the times people are asking questions and looking for useful information on Google, it makes sense that when Google feels that a particular answer satisfies a particular question, that answer is featured as a snippet.

As you can see in the above image (from my website), the featured snippet stands out compared to other links on the search results page.

You don’t get snippets all the time. Snippets are usually triggered by queries that contain, “what is”, “how is” or “how much”.

A relevant part of the text is picked from your link and featured in the snippets section. It is like, while analyzing the question asked by the search engine user, Google finds the traces of the right answer on your link, picks up the relevant portion, and then puts it in the featured snippets section.

Many webmasters believe that being featured in Google’s featured snippets can be counter-productive because then the search engine users have no reason to visit the link.

It depends. It can also increase the chances of the search engine users visiting your website more if they like the answer presented in the snippet. A big part of your answer appearing in the snippet also makes a strong impression on search engine users because they think that if Google is highlighting your answer then your link must have relevant information.

Is there a way you can get your links ranked and featured in the Google featured snippets section?

Over the years since Google started featuring links in this section various SEO experts and content marketers have been trying to figure out how to pinpoint the qualities or attributes that get your link featured in the section.

Ahref has done a comprehensive study on how many links are being featured in the snippets section on exactly what are the benefits of getting featured there.

The Ahref study has found that there is a decline in the number of clicks when your link is featured in the snippets section.

image chart showing that the CTR declines for the snippet-featured links

You can see in the above graphic that when a link is featured in the snippets section it gets approximately only 8.6% of clicks but when it is not featured it gets 19.6%.

It proves the apprehension of some webmasters that if your link is listed in the snippets section then people have less motivation to click it because they have already found the information they are looking for.

If I can remember my own search pattern I think I agree with this conclusion. Sometimes when I’m looking for an answer and when I find the answer in the featured snippets section, there is no reason for me to visit the actual link or, it prompts me to visit another link because I don’t seem to be able to find the right answer within the snippet.

But there is another finding in the same above Ahref link: the overall clicks on the remaining links appearing below the featured snippets link tend to fall down.

This might be because Google has become so efficient in digging out the appropriate answer and featuring it on the snippets section that after having viewed the snippet, users have no reason to check the other links.

On the other hand, detailed analysis of Google’s featured snippets on this link shows that if the link that appears in the featured section is followed by another link from your website, the CTR increases tremendously, sometimes by a whopping 516%.

How to make your content appear in the Google’s featured snippets section

Most of the SEO websites suggest that there is no definitive way of ranking in Google’s featured snippets section, but still, there is a pattern that emerges as more and more people study it.

which words in the query make it easier to rank in Google featured snippets section

Personally, I wouldn’t advise you to go crazy about getting your content featured in the snippets section. What matters the most is, what benefit you derive out of the various positions you get on the search engine result page.

Anyway, if you want to get featured there, you should take some clue from the way people ask questions on Quora.

You can follow the same pattern while writing content for your own website.

Create your blog posts, articles and web pages in QA form: ask a question in the title of your link and then provide an answer in the body text.

Remember that Google should be able to find a complete answer to the query submitted by the search engine user. The answer to this query can manifest in the form of

  • A small paragraph that can fit into a snippet
  • A bullet list of different parts of the answer
  • Data presented in a tabular format

As you can see in the featured snippet from my own website, it is a paragraph.

The text taken for the Google’s featured snippet can appear anywhere in your body text. Just make sure that the words contained within the question also appear within the text that you would like to present as a snippet candidate.

Of course, the usual conditions need to exist, such as, you should already be enjoying good or comparatively better search engine rankings. Your links should already be ranking for you to appear in Google’s featured snippets section.

So, if you want to publish content specifically for the featured snippets section, first focus on improving your general SEO

Google’s Featured Snippets: How to rank at #1 with strategic content writing

Google-featured-snippets

I was checking the rankings of my blog posts that I have recently published and I suddenly found one of my links in Google’s Featured Snippets box. Here is the screenshot

credible-content-showing-up-in-Google-snippets

What Are Google’s Featured Snippets?

Nobody knows exactly how Google decides to feature a particular piece of content in its “featured snippets” box, but you must have noticed that sometimes when you do a search on Google, one of the links appears at the top with highlighted paragraph, or some portion of the web page or blog post, along with the link.

Some call it ranking #0 because the link that is featured in Google’s Featured Snippets box appears even before the first link on the search results page. But many would be scared with #0 so, in my title I have used #1.

As you can see in the image above, the Google’s Featured Snippets box appears at the top, within the highlighted box, and a description almost as long as a paragraph.

It isn’t always a paragraph that is featured in the snippets area. Even if you represent the information in bullet points, it can appear over there. See for example, this one…

another example of Google snippets

How does Google pick a particular link for the Featured Snippets box?

As I have written above, it is unclear how Google decides which link to feature in the snippets area. Many SEO experts and content marketers have tried to figure out but there is no algorithmic logic to it. Google seems to be picking the information randomly.

Here is a very extensive blog post on how to optimize your content so that it can feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box [HubSpot link].

The author says that whether you get featured in the snippets box or not doesn’t depend on the SEO quality of your link. Your link may not even appear on the first page of search results and still appear in the snippets box.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that even if you throw all SEO benchmarks out the window you are still going to feature in the snippets box. No, that won’t happen. Your content must be of good quality and it must give some indication to Google that it deserves to be featured in the snippets box. Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

Is focusing on the Google Featured Snippets box good for your SEO?

People are sometimes worried that featuring in the Google Featured Snippets box deters people from clicking the link because what they are looking for is given in the box itself. Since they have found a solution to their problem, there is no reason for them to click the link.

The author of the above HubSpot link says:

From a sample of just under 5,000 queries, I found that the CTR to the HubSpot website for high volume keywords increased by over 114%, even when we ranked #1

What he means to say is that even when their link was already appearing at #1 there CTR increased by over 114% once the link started appearing in the Featured Snippets box.

Even I feel that this should actually increase traffic to your website because one, people who know how important search engine rankings are, are quite impressed that you are bang there in front of them, at the top, even above the link at #1, and two, they want more information. A single paragraph may provide a concise view of the solution they are looking for. They can only find a detailed description when they visit the link. Most do.

Here is a Moz link that demonstrates that traffic to your website actually increases if your link features in that box.

How to write content for #1 ranking by Google’s Featured Snippets?

As I have mentioned in this blog post titled 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content, focus on quality.

Provide to people what they are looking for. Don’t mislead them. Don’t create titles and headlines in such a manner that people are tricked into visiting your website and then when they come there, they are disappointed.

In fact, due to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor, web pages and blog posts that don’t provide straightforward answers to people’s questions will start ranking lower even when they are decently optimized and even when they have quality back links. It matters what you are providing.

In order to be able to feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box, it has been observed that

  1. Try to create a question out of the main expression and put that question within the <h1> or <h2> tags.
  2. Try to enclose the main quarry by the user in the above tags.
  3. Just beneath the question, provide an answer. Try to provide the answer within 50-60 words.
  4. Use the language as if you are providing an answer to a question. Your answer should follow the question naturally.
  5. For question-oriented keywords, Google prefers bullet points but if you are searching for something like “content writing services”, Google prefers to pick a paragraph.

Focus on answering questions when writing content keeping Featured Snippets in mind. Ask a question, and then immediately provide an answer, preferably in 50-60 words.

Does this guarantee that your link will appear in the Featured Snippets box? No.

It is quite random.

Then how can you get your link featured in this coveted section?

Create lots of content. Create many webpages and blog posts providing high-quality content.

You have to establish your authority. Many of your links should already be ranking well before Google begins to notice useful chunks of information on your web pages and blog posts. You cannot suddenly start publishing blog posts and then expect that your links will be featured in the snippets section.

Follow the pattern. Follow the SEO format that includes

  1. Use the main search term or the keyword at least once within <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags.
  2. Write shorter paragraphs under the headings and try to provide as complete an answer as possible to the main quarry within 40-60 words in a paragraph.
  3. Use bullet points wherever possible to present stepwise information.

I would like to stress again that there is no set formula for appearing in Google’s Featured Snippet box. All you can do is, keep publishing great content.

How better content improves your search engine rankings

Better content improves your search engine rankings

I have many clients who need content to improve their search engine rankings and this is why they hire me. They know that I can write them optimized content without having to resort to keyword stuffing and creating nonsensical content just to fill up blog posts and webpages. But how does it actually happen? How does better content improve your search engine rankings?

Better content and search engine rankings are interconnected

Search engines survive on the strength of the content they can index and rank for the users. Why would you use Google if you don’t find what you’re looking for? When you use a search engine you’re looking for some information that you can trust and rely on. Suppose the search engine is unable to provide you that information? What do you do? Perhaps due to the preconceived reputation you go on using it for some time but eventually you give up and then you try to find another search engine that can give you better results. When you shift your focus to another search engines, the search engine you have abandoned (Google, for instance) loses business because in order to earn money, they need more users.

This is the reason why the quality of your content matters to the search engines. Is this foolproof? No way. Lots of shoddy content shows up, undeservedly, on the first page, even at the first spot at the first page, but with every successive update (Penguin, Panda, etc.) they are weeding out such aberrations.

You will be surprised to know that the search engine algorithms these days also take into factor your bounce rate. If people aren’t spending much time on your blog or website, it means you’re not providing value. If people are going through various links within your website and spending a couple of minutes going through your important pages, the search engines can make out that your content is worth reading, and hence, good. If you don’t have well-written content, if your content doesn’t provide the information people are looking for, they leave your website within a few seconds. How do you keep people on your website longer?

  • Create compelling headlines.
  • Deliver on the promise you have made in the headline and in the title
  • Use shorter sentences because many people access your content via smaller screens, for example mobile phones and tablets
  • Don’t create very big paragraphs
  • Don’t clutter your webpage with unnecessary animations, images and links (every distraction can cost you a customer)
  • Make your content shareable

Social validation these days is as important as creating quality content (but don’t just focus on social validation at the cost of creating quality content). How many people find your content worth sharing? In this Moz Whiteboard Friday presentation Josh Bachynski explains how it matters that authoritative people in your niche talk about your content and share it on their own timelines and blogs. The more such people promote your content, the greater search engine improvements you experience.

Social validation depends a lot on how better you can make your content. It is voluntary action. People will promote your content only if it adds value or at least delivers something they are looking for.

So focus on the quality rather than quantity. Hire a content writer not to produce bulk content for you, but high-quality content.