What I did to get indexed on Google for my startup
Most people disregard SEO, but as an SEO expert and wanting to grow organically right off the bat, here's what I've done for my new startup Linkilo.co to get indexed within weeks (3-5) of building my site.
In the SEO community, people referred to a site not being indexed in the beginning as a "sandbox" stage. Rightly so, because so many websites are being created so to validate an actual website, the search engine takes time to determine if they should be indexed or not. Also, discovery. If no links are built, it will take a long time for your site to get discovered by search engines, even though you submit your sitemap.
So, to help my Indie community and to help increase my startup visibility. Here are a few suggestions:
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Grey hat expired domain method: Well not necessarily a grey hat because many companies rebrand their company. So I've bought a few expired domains that resemble my site, with a few links associated with them. It didn't have to have hundreds, just enough. I have Ahref so I can see what kind of links it already had.
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Directory listing: I hired an assistant to list my site to multiple startup directories. So far, I've gotten 22 referring domains. It doesn't matter if it's a no-follow or follow link, every link gets discovered.
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Reddit, Indiehacker, forums: I did a mix of adding my links, but also my startup name without a link, so people might search for the brand name on Google. So, my startup Linkilo has been searched and clicked.
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Brute force: I've added a total of 9 blog post to https://www.linkilo.co/blog, 7 articles right off the bat, and interlinked as much as possible so if Google finds one post, it will crawl the other links within that post and gets discovered. Then, I'll find some forums related to those articles and post them. So the game plan was to write related articles (cluster). As I add more posts, it takes 2-3 weeks to get discovered and indexed. The more post/pages you add, the quicker you get indexed.
I have started a new project so I want to know that should I add www, or go without www, like https://www.crazybings.com
I always just add Search Console and then a sitemap and request indexing. Is this not universally effective?
External link and Interlinking allows search engine bots to successfully crawl and index your articles. Search engine bots love to crawl, and the way they do it is through links. Once they discover a page, it goes through all the content and all the links and crawls the links and their content and so forth. So if you want your content to be discovered, crawled and indexed, you’ll want to link your pages together.
If you only submit your sitemap or URL request indexing, its on queue. We don't know when google will run that queue and discover, crawl and then index it.
So, if for example, google is crawling Indiehacker and finds your site URL, it will start crawling.
This is why both external and internal linking is important.
The simple strategy is to make your site discoverable with every angle.
However, once your site is known and you have a lot of content, it's easy for google to index your site within the hour. But for a new startup, it's harder.
Interseting. I just added growthsprints.co and it was indexed in 7 hours. Seems way faster than a whole long process with expired domains and stuff.
You're the lucky few. Now try adding a few post or see if other pages on your site is indexed that quick *crossfinger
My site is affected by google updates now how to recover it. The traffic goes down on site https://www.cuzyman.com and also less number of sales in my affiliate account.
You're too broad, focus on one niche. Otherwise, wait a few years for you to be authoritative.
Very insightful thanks!
Nice ideas! How did you find the expired domains? Did you search for domains that were available and then use ahrefs to see if they had backlink history, or did you know the domains before they expired?
You can use several tools, but the cheapest (free) is https://www.expireddomains.net/
Sign up, and filter "available domains".
Search for related terms. I used "link" as a keyword for querying domains. This is where you spend some time searching and analyzing expired domains.
https://www.prepostseo.com/domain-authority-checker check the DA with this and spam score
Ahref for backlinks analysis. Anything russion or Chinese or Japanese links I avoid
Then go buy it on Namecheap or something for like $8-15
Lots of work...
the alternative is to buy domains that are very well established but that would cost $300-1000s
Using an assistant to locate other sites who would be valuable backlinks is smart. Great idea!
Wonderful! Thank you. You have my upvote (and I've visited your site with interest).
Kudos!