June 18th, 2018

Have you recently realized that your new content doesn’t seem to appearing online? Or maybe it’s out there, but prospects just aren’t finding it?  This is really upsetting because you have some new information to provide to potential homebuyers. If you didn’t already know, this is because Google hasn’t visited your website since you last updated your content.  As unfortunate as this is, you can’t force indexing on your website.  A search engine index is a database that correlates keywords and websites so that the search engine can display websites that match a user’s search query.   The good news is that you can take a few precautions to ensure that Google visits your website more often. As a loan officer you owe this to your potential homebuyers in order to keep them looped in.  Obviously, you should first ensure that your website is indexed by Google and add it if it isn’t.  Similarly to improving your SEO, you can follow a few simple steps to improve your website’s indexing.

Creative Content Creation

It seems self explanatory, but the creation of your content plays a crucial role in website indexing.  If a viewer would scroll passed your content with reading it, then so would Google. It can’t waste it’s time crawling your website if it isn’t worth the read.  Keep in mind that Google also doesn’t like duplicate copies of content, so don’t reuse old articles. Your content should be new and unique and you should be posting it regularly without disappearing for weeks at a time.  With a record of regular postings that draw people’s attention, Google will visit your website much more often. Worse comes to worst, you can always rewrite what you’ve written in order to keep it fresh.

Google Robots

Always remember that these robots can’t spend all day on your website.  It’s important to ensure that they have an easy time getting around, making the most of the time that they are there.  Avoid having pages that are slow to load. Using web-optimized graphics instead of large, high-resolution graphics can help speed things up. However, if your content is slowing load times, the robots may not be able to reference your pages during the visit.  Additionally, duplicate content will confuse the bots and delay their crawl time. Therefore, you must remove any content that is located on two separate areas of your website.

Notify Google

You have the ability to let Google know when you update your content.  You can go ahead and ping all major search engine services, ensuring that they are aware of your new content. By informing these sites, it can lure Google to your website and has the ability to improve your indexing.  

Internal and External Linking

The use of internal and external linking allows readers as well as Google to easily navigate your site and understand what you’re saying.  This is an important component of SEO as well. Don’t forget that these links are there though. At any random time a link can stop working which is why it’s imperative to go back and check these links periodically. For instance, if you ever decide to change your website URL, you’ll probably be able to transfer all of your content easily. However, the internal links may still be requesting your old domain name and linking to broken pages. Embedding internal and external links into your texts will help your newest content become indexed almost immediately.

Title and Meta Description

Think of Google as another user that is scrolling through the internet.  Titles should be short yet descriptive in order to bring Google, as well as your readers, in.  It should clearly demonstrate the topic at hand. This not only will improve indexing on your website, but will also improve SEO.  The same goes for your meta description. It should include a combination of informative text and a strong call to action. Placing keywords in your meta description also increases the likelihood of users choosing your website.  If a reader wouldn’t choose your website, than why should Google? It’s important to keep this in mind when you’re producing new content.

In order to stay up to date with potential homebuyers, your website must remain present.  Homebuyers need to easily find your site if you want them to reach out to you.  Improving the indexing on your website will show that your website is updated and will put you in an overall better light in the mortgage industry.