Indexing Service For Client's Blog On Money Site

[MeganR]

I'd love some feedback on a new client's in-house SEO's strategy for their blog.

I'm managing local SEO & on-page optimization for the business, and the in-house SEO team manages everything else.

The in-house SEO is currently using backlinksindexer.com to get their main site's blog posts indexed faster.

This seems risky to me; thoughts?

Honestly, I've never heard of anyone using an indexing service on their money site. I've only seen indexing services used for the purpose of getting citations or other backlinks indexed faster.

I should mention that the client is in a VERY competitive industry and all of their competitors have their money site blog posts indexed within a matter of hours. Unsure of what their 'secret sauce' is, but it's like nothing I've ever seen.

I have suggested to my client's in-house team, the possibility of using the google url submit option. They tried it, but were frustrated because the google feature only allows you to submit up to 10 urls per day. Perhaps, based on IP address and to prevent spamming? This client has between 6-10 new blog posts per day -- crazy I know! Again, extremely competitive niche.

Any other alternatives that you can suggest?

I've also seen people add a bunch of 'ping' services directly into WP, which automatically runs as soon as a blog post is added to the site. Is this 'less spammy' and less likely to result in a penalty?

In fact, backlinksindexer.com even offers a WP plugin for just this purpose.

 

[djbaxter]

Nothing wrong with ping services on a WordPress site. WordPress comes with one ping service already included and you can easily add more without plugins.

I find that generally WordPress posts do get crawled pretty quickly. I don’t know anything about the service you mention or what they add to a core WordPress installation though. I’ll take a look...

Typically, once Google is crawling a site there is no need to manually add URLs and no benefit to be derived from doing so.

You’ll get more bang from just using the built-in WordPress sitemap generator.

 

[djbaxter]

The in-house SEO is currently using backlinkindexer.com to get their main site's blog posts indexed faster.

I tried to check out that site but got this error:

Welcome to Parallels!

If you are seeing this message, the website for backlinkindexer.com is not available at this time.
If you are the owner of this website, one of the following things may be occurring:

• You have not put any content on your website.
• Your provider has suspended this page.

 

[Digitaldar]

Perhaps there is a missing s?
#1 Rated Backlink Indexing Service | Index Backlinks to Boost Rankings

 

[djbaxter]

Thanks, Digitaldar.

Have you used that service?

Their site and video looks rather spammy to me...

 

[MeganR]

Correct! Thanks.

 

[Digitaldar]

I have not used it but am following the conversation and when I saw the link was broken, had an idea of what it could be

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I'd love some feedback on a new client's in-house SEO's strategy for their blog.

I'm managing local SEO & on-page optimization for the business, and the in-house SEO team manages everything else.

The in-house SEO is currently using backlinkindexer.com to get their main site's blog posts indexed faster.

This seems risky to me; thoughts?

Honestly, I've never heard of anyone using an indexing service on their money site. I've only seen indexing services used for the purpose of getting citations or other backlinks indexed faster.

I should mention that the client is in a VERY competitive industry and all of their competitors have their money site blog posts indexed within a matter of hours. Unsure of what their 'secret sauce' is, but it's like nothing I've ever seen.

I have suggested to my client's in-house team, the possibility of using the google url submit option. They tried it, but were frustrated because the google feature only allows you to submit up to 10 urls per day. Perhaps, based on IP address and to prevent spamming? This client has between 6-10 new blog posts per day -- crazy I know! Again, extremely competitive niche.

Any other alternatives that you can suggest?

I've also seen people add a bunch of 'ping' services directly into WP, which automatically runs as soon as a blog post is added to the site. Is this 'less spammy' and less likely to result in a penalty?

In fact, backlinkindexer.com even offers a WP plugin for just this purpose.

It seems like their in house team is misinformed on indexing.

Indexing isn't a ranking factor. Whether you are indexed quickly or slowly isn't an issue for your ranking. And Google is really good at indexing at a good pace based on your website's history of publishing content. If your client publishes content at a daily rate, Google should be crawling them at a daily rate. That combined with indexing not being a ranking factor kind of makes indexing services useless for them (and yes, those services are spammy).

Indexing services should be used for content that may never be indexed on its own, if ever at all. On the white hat side of things, that would include properties such as citations where your profile may be on an island and Google has no way to find it because the site architecture for that site is terrible. On the black hat side of things, which is what indexing services are really used for, you're looking at PBN's and other black hat link building tactics where these links are so crappy they would never be indexed otherwise and still may not get indexed anyway.

Google URL submit is no longer viable, honestly. It used to index a lot of listings at a great rate. This year Google more or less "nerfed" it to 5-10 listings per account (not IP) and even then the indexing rate is horid. Now, did Google just update their quality guidelines for indexing and are just indexing less crappy content? Maybe. That would make the tool innocent in indexing rate and make it Google's fault. But it's entirely possible Google hasn't changed how they index and the tool just sucks now.

Seriously, that tool is useless. But people were spamming the crap out of it with many link indexing services mass submitting to that tool. It was being abused and Google cracked down on it.

There's an article about it somewhere. They did it early this year. February maybe?

But again, indexing rate for good, quality content is high naturally. Indexing services are for crappy, spammy backlinks that may not get indexed otherwise. Not for good content.

It's my opinion, based on the information you gave me, that the in-house SE) team is wasting their time.

 

[MeganR]

Got it. Thanks, for the great answer. One more quick question....

If they continue to use this, could Google penalize the site anyway?

My concern is that they are a relatively new account and I don't want to see a dip in rankings due to in-house SEO efforts.

As I understand it, the indexing service uses a bunch of web 2.0 properties to expedite indexing, and I was concerned that these could be seen as spammy backlinks in and of themselves, causing a possible unnatural linkbuilding penalty.

Maybe, my concerns are unfounded?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Got it. Thanks, for the great answer. One more quick question....

If they continue to use this, could Google penalize the site anyway?

My concern is that they are a relatively new account and I don't want to see a dip in rankings due to in-house SEO efforts.

As I understand it, the indexing service uses a bunch of web 2.0 properties to expedite indexing, and I was concerned that these could be seen as spammy backlinks in and of themselves, causing a possible unnatural linkbuilding penalty.

Maybe, my concerns are unfounded?

It's possible Google could penalize them. It depends on the method the backlink indexer uses.

Many backlink indexers use to index by basically building spammy backlinks to your already spammy backlink. If they're doing that, using exact match anchor text, etc. then it's definitely a risk. Google has stated I believe that Penguin is no longer a penalty and they won't penalize sites for bad backlinks because it was being used by black hats to tank competitor websites. They would just buy a bunch of spammy backlinks, make them exact match anchor text, and shoot them at their competitors. Google says this is no longer possible. But I've seen evidence (anecdotal at best) that penalties may still be around.

Just to make sure, someone should find the article where Google mentioned backlink penalties being retired to make sure I'm right about that.

Honestly, considering the service is not helping and it could only hurt, I would suggest they retire it as a strategy.

 

[billbean]

MeganR,

I'll pile on.

Your client's in-house team is not helping. If the content is in any way legit, it's going to get indexed. I would run from the backlinksindexer service.

Your client's social channels will help with drawing attention to the content. If they're investing in content, then part of that investment should be boosting those posts on Facebook (probably). Or given the amount of content, perhaps boosting a "round up" post once a week.

The site structure itself will have the biggest impact on those new posts getting indexed. By that I mean, if Google is crawling the site and can easily find those new posts, then you're fine. Presuming the content is not "thin".

Hard to imagine how 6-10 blog posts a day would serve anyone other than a news type site. Particularly not a local client. I smell a rotten SEO strategy behind that.

Good luck.

Bill

 

[MeganR]

Thanks, I appreciate your analysis.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Quickest way I've gotten content indexed is actually posting on Google+ surprisingly enough if you aren't getting good rates with the google fetch tool in Search Console. Like David mentioned, WordPress' ping service is fine as well.

Most of the time I've seen good enough results with the tools I already have, and to echo other's... indexing doesn't mean the content will rank better out the gate. It just means Google knows it's there.

If the content is valuable/useful to others (as it should be), then have a promotion strategy in place to get it out there as soon as it's published. Share on social media, get other people talking about it. That will definitely get it on Google's radar. Post and pray is not a real approach to building an audience.

Stay away from sketchy services and use some of the tools already available and trusted.

 

[MeganR]

Bill,

Good advice.

Thank you.