Michael Jenson over at SoloSEO introduced a new index ranking tool his company has developed called IndexRank that allows you to measure the rate at which your site is indexed. On a scale of 0-10 you’re given an indication of how often Google (or any search engine for that matter) is coming to index your site.
The main factor is content. The more often you add content, the more your site will be indexed while site owners who only periodically add content will see a lower rate of indexing. The age of your site plays a factor as well.
What a wake up call! I wasn’t real concerned with the Lonely Marketer because I add content often and am not real concerned with how I’m indexed. BUT, checking on the site for the company at which I work was a different story. We have some work to do. We have a fairly sophisticated site with alot of content, but unfortunately we’re not adding new content often enough.
So, why does this matter? Why should a small business marketing department be concerned with their rate of indexing?
Well, for one, this is an indication of how much content you’re adding and how fast you’re doing it. The more relevant content your site produces the more hooks you have to keep visitors around and hopefully turn them into leads or buying customers.
The other side of this is how often the search engines come through, crawl your site, and add your content to their indexes. The last thing you want is to create and post a piece of relevant, current content and not have the search engines crawl it for a month afterwards.
Check out their tool - it’s quick and easy and provides useful information!
Tags: IndexRank, Search Engine Spiders, SoloSEO
Naw, I’m not concerned with rate of indexing. It’s only important if you are already adding lots of new content that needs to be found right way. Most sites just don’t need that. If you’re getting indexed well enough, and you add new content, a few well placed links will get the new stuff found.
Good thoughts, Stoney. The well placed links carry a ton of weight. We’re dealing with some issues where certain pages of our site our just not getting indexed and the low ratings from this tool was maybe an indicator that we need to add content more frequently.
I’d tend to think it’s an indicator that you need to figure out how you might better link those pages, both internally or externally. I understand the *need* to be spidered, but I’m not convinced being spidered frequently matters all that much.
I think the spider rate definitely DOES matter for many sites. Imagine you’re the first to get wind of a new spicy story or just signed a new product (but not exclusivity). You want to ensure that as soon as that content is on your site, you get spidered, indexed, and ranked immediately.
I’m not saying you’re wrong Stoney, what I’m saying is it’s not black and white. You have a definite point that internal and external linking is crucial, but the reason it’s important is to attract SEs on as many different pages (or sites) as possible, thus lending greater credibility to your content.
Gary, you are absolutely right that it does matter for certain type of sites. I often get tunnel-vision and put things into perspective of the type of clients we work with. News sits and blogs definitely benefit from frequent spidering.
Thanks for the conversation, guys! I was thinking along your lines, Garry. We release new products all the time and we try to optimize those pages for search - it would be nice to have them spidered right away. But, to Stoney’s point, a few links might work as well.
Yes if your site in indexed then the new contents will be automatically indexed at regular intervals. Fresh contents also increase the frequency of bots to re visit your site.
One of the reasons I setup my sites in the form of blogs is for this exact reason. I want to get those bots to my site on a regular basis. I sure wish there was some magic formula to figure all this out!