How Long Do Backlinks Take to Get Indexed?
How Long Do Backlinks Take to Get Indexed?
If you are right now searching…
‘How to check if your backlinks are indexed?’
…it means that you are also lost in the mystery of backlinks that is like a maze.
Fetching a backlink is one thing.
Seeing its results is another.
The difference between these two worlds is what defines the complexity of the SEO landscape.
There is no single answer to this question:
How long does backlink indexing take?
Some backlinks:
- Get indexed within a few minutes or hours
- Take a few days to get indexed.
- Have to wait for weeks or months.
- Never get indexed.
So there is nothing simple, clear, and compact in the world of SEO.
Everything is so complex and integrated that you can’t come up with a general answer.
But for many people, the answer to this question is like a fairytale:
- You outreach a quality blogger site
- Write amazing content with an editorial link to your site
- And see your site getting ranking higher
I wish it worked likes this (SEOs life would have been a lot easier!), but in reality, it doesn’t.
However, there are definitely some factors that play their role in shaping the answer to this question:
How long does it take for backlinks to get indexed?
Before we dig out these factors and everything surrounding this question, let’s see what the whole fuss is about.
What’s Backlink Indexing?
In 2014, Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, said that backlinks are likely to become less important in the future.
It’s been 6 years since then, but backlinks are still among the most important ranking factors.
But Google first needs to know about the existence of backlinks and put them into its database to make them impact your site’s ranking on SERPs.
That’s where backlink indexing comes into play.
To understand indexing, you need to consider Google as a huge data storage room that is filled with information about all the webpages on the internet.
So whenever a website gets new content or a link, Google sends its workers (crawlers) to collect newly added data on a website, like a page, content, or link, and add that data to the index.
That’s the whole science behind backlink indexing.
But the actual mystery is how much time crawlers take to index a link (or any other data)?
It depends!
Here are some factors that affect fast backlink indexing.
Which Factors Get Backlinks Indexed Fast?
Though nobody knows the exact secret-sauce that we can add to our backlink strategy to index our backlinks fast.
Different studies have proven that these factors have their share of impact on the indexing process:
1. Domain Authority of the Linking Site
Domain authority is Moz’s metric to determine the competitiveness of a website on SERPs.
Higher DA means more possibility of ranking higher, and low DA means less possibility of ranking higher.
This formula applies to the backlinks coming from these sites as well.
A link coming from a high DA site contains more worth in Google’s eyes, and it is more likely to get indexed quickly.
In fact, it has also been proven in a study by Kristina Kledzik:
A link from a high DA score like 77 gives a faster boost to your ranking than a link from a site with a DA score of 22.
There are three core reasons why a high DA site link gets more attention:
- It has already gained Google’s attention, and Google considers it worth-considering.
- Google crawlers are already familiar with their pages. So they crawl their data faster.
- They publish more quantity of quality content, so crawlers are mostly attentive towards these pages.
So the domain authority of the linking site has its role in determining the fate of fast backlink indexing.
2. Domain Age of the Site
Is domain age a metric of the ranking?
The answer to this question is complex (well, that’s what the SEO world is all about!).
Google doesn’t consider domain age as a similar metric for ranking as it visualizes backlinks, quality content, keywords, etc.
But it also doesn’t mean that domain age has no role in SEO.
Google considers domain age as a factor to determine the health of a website.
It does impact many SEO related things indirectly.
According to SEO Siren, Domain Age contributes to increasing a site’s authority.
The domain age metric somehow plays its role in marking the link potential of a site and its possibility of getting indexed faster.
3. Diverse Link Profile Matters a Lot
Google likes natural links. And it is way too smart to tell if a link is natural or not.
Here are two main ways to check if a link is a quality link or not.
Number 1: If you get links through the same source many times, Google starts considering it as spamming.
So such links neither get indexed nor transfer any link juice to your site.
Google doesn’t have any issue with bulk backlink indexing, but it does consider if the links are coming from diverse sources or not.
Number 2: If your same page gets links from many sources, Google also considers it as an unnatural linking.
The best practice is to avoid any way that makes your link profile look spammy.
Seeing a spammed link indexed is a very far off dream. It can also make your site the bad boy of the town in Google’s eyes.
So make sure you get links from different link building techniques, and everything looks natural.
4. Social Share & Popularity
It is a long debate on whether social shares and social media engagement help you boost your ranking or not.
Because on one side, Google says that it DOESN’T CONSIDER SOCIAL SHARE as a direct ranking factor.
But on the other hand, SEOs have received many signals that show that social media engagement has a positive impact on a site.
We don’t know if Google is playing hide and seek with us or whatever, but one thing is evident:
More social engagement signals Google that people are interacting with a website because they like its content.
So Google automatically starts considering a website if people show their interest in it.
So a link from an interesting site also becomes a point of interest for Google.
Simple!
5. Number of Backlinks
Here is a simple question:
A single vote is more considerable, or more votes are worthful?
I hope you can see where I am going.
The more the number of backlinks you get at once, the more your links will get the limelight.
But remember, here I am talking about ‘high number of quality links,’ not just quantity without quality.
It is a good strategy to work on getting more than one high-quality links if you want to fast index backlinks and get a higher ranking.
6. Niche-Specific & Relevant Site
A link from a niche-specific and relevant site is more valuable than many links from a non-relevant site.
Obviously, why a site will link out to you if its readers have nothing to do with your content or if your link doesn’t add any value to its content?
And Google understands this thing.
That’s the reason why we, at Globex Outreach, give so much importance to fetching niche-specific sites for our clients for guest posting.
So if you hire our monthly guest posting service, you should rest assured that we will place your link on only niche-specific blogger sites that can give you a powerful and relevant link.
So a contextual link surrounded by the relevant content is more valuable and attention-grabbing than a randomly tossed link within an irrelevant content.
7. Anchor Text Tells About the Content
Anchor text is not just a hyperlinked word that takes you from one page to another page.
It basically tells Google what the linked page is about.
There are basically five types of anchor text.
- Exact match
- Partial match
- Naked URL
- Branded
- Generic words or phrases
An anchor text that defines the page of the content is more likely to get the attention of the crawlers as it helps them understand what the content is about.
So help out Google’s crawler so that they can help you by fast backlink indexing.
How to Index Backlinks Quickly?
So now, after knowing all the stories about backlink indexing, you might be thinking that is there someone who offers a backlink indexing service.
The answer is ‘yes.’
But the good news is that you can also move the needle on your own to get better results.
If you want to fast index backlinks (that we all want to!), here is what you need to do:
STEP 1: Conduct a Link Audit
In simple words:
A link audit means checking the condition of your backlinks:
- Their health
- If they are indexed or not
- Either they are broken or intact
This also gives an answer to your question:
How to check backlinks indexed by Google?
Many online tools can help you for this purpose.
Like, you can use Monitor Backlinks that tells you the condition of your links along with their ranking.
Keep an eye on your backlinks – a very close eye.
Well, link audit is not only important to know if your backlinks are indexed or not, but checking the quality of your backlinks is also important to ensure that:
Only good things come your way.
STEP 2: Set a Sitemap
What can be better than if you can knock on Google’s door to tell it that you have added something new on your page, come and crawl it?
For certain good reasons, Google has made it possible.
You can make a list of all the pages of your website – in other words, make a sitemap – and submit it to Google.
It will help you in three-way:
- It tells search engines what your website contains currently.
- It gives a signal if some changes are made on your website.
- It indicates to Google how often it should crawl your website.
Submit a sitemap if you want to stay under Google’s radar and free your soul from the question…
How long do backlinks take to get indexed?
…because Google will itself get a heads-up when every time something new happens to your site.
Cheers!
STEP 3: Link Back to the Linking Site
You can play a big part in making a backlink indexing process fast.
And for that you don’t have to do much:
Just give a link back to the linking page to enhance its authority.
That link will sprinkle some pixie dust of authority and value to that page, and everything is written on that page – including your link.
No need to create much fuss. Just check out one of your relevant content on your site and adjust a link to that page.
That’s it!
It will play the ace card in giving your backlink some value and boost.
Conclusion
Backlinks are one of the essential SEO factors.
But you need to do a lot of work to make backlinks work for you.
That’s not easy, but also not hard enough that you give up on them.
Focusing on your backlinking site, how you fetch backlinks, and how you tackle things further play an important role in defining:
How long do backlinks take to get indexed?
So watch out for what you are doing; it will impact your whole backlink strategy and link profile in the long run.
