How fast is your content indexed by Google?

This question is often asked by beginners. After you put your website on the web and fill it with content, it may take some time before your content actually shows up in the search engine. There's also a chance that it won't show up at all. In this blog post, we'll look at how quickly a post, page or update can get indexed and displayed. And what the reasons for this might be.

How can you find out?

The first place to start, of course, is to look at this data, which can be done in many different ways. However, walking into the lion's den is often the easiest solution. Using a tool from Google, Google Search Console, will give you more insight into this and other related data. This way, you don't have to manually check this for your URLs and keywords. Because that could even be harmful. And your behavior could be considered as SPAM. So it is more than advisable not to check this compulsively yourself, but to install or use an appropriate tool. Google Search Console can be set up in no time and is very user-friendly with a number of smart tools.

Google Search Console is also free and can be set up by adding a single TXT record if you already have a Google account. In most cases, this will already be the case.

Want to know how to install Google Search Console for your website and domain? Then read our knowledge base article on this.

If you want to use Google Search Console, we recommend that you activate it as soon as your website is ready. The more history it can build, the more insight you'll have into potential changes and growth spurts.

With a new domain name and website.

There are different opinions and theories on this, but with new websites and especially new domains, it can take up to 8 months before you have a full picture of your results in front of you in the Google search engine. This is known as the Google sandbox and has been proven by several parties in test cases and disproven in others. However, it's often because when you have a new website and a completely new domain, you can't expect it to stand out within a day or two. Certainly not on the first or second pages of Google.

It can therefore be a disappointment for new startups or webmasters who are looking hopefully at organic results in the first few months after launch. Therefore, in such a startup or initial phase, the first thing you should take care of is ads on Google and social media. Because here you can place an ad for any budget that will bring immediate results. and not after a long wait.

However, this should not stop you from creating and prioritizing your content as much as possible in the initial stages of your website. After all, this can bring such positive results after a certain period of time. And you may be able to reduce the advertising budget and switch to organic search results.

Once your domain name has some authority

So after your domain name and website have gone through this 8 month period, you should see more results in the Google search engine. Assuming, of course, that you meet the content requirements, have designed your site for speed and user-friendliness, and have technically enabled Google's crawler to index your site.

With an older domain name, you will also get faster results from new posts and content. For example, a domain name and website set up in 2019 will rank in Google just 5 days after it was published and will already receive several clicks. So it will almost always take some time, several to 8 months, for the final results of a post or page to actually show up. So don't be too quick to decide to delete or edit a piece of content immediately if you haven't given it a chance to fully develop.

A domain name further increases its authority by publishing more content and getting backlinks from relevant parties and domains. However, this is always a metric from Ahrefs or Semrush. It is not an official number or rating from Google.

The keywords and terms you focus on.

A big part of Google ranking also always depends on the keywords or key phrases you choose to focus on. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush will give you more insight into the keywords you are targeting. If you create posts and pages for lower difficulty terms, they are more likely to show up in Google search results than if you create content for a difficult term.

So choose your keywords and terms wisely and make sure they are balanced. That way, you're more likely to rank higher!

Do you need help to appear higher on Google? Then check out our partner MijnWebdesignPartner.nl, we have services here that can help you with that.