I Missed One Step That Kept Me From Ranking For 10 Keywords
So up until a couple of days ago I believed all the hard work I was putting into this blog was barely making any difference in google search results.
I had a couple of keywords that were bouncing around but certainly not making any real difference. One had a ranking of 80 or so and another almost broke the top ten! Except only 10 people were looking for that keyword a month.
Even if I got to the first spot in that keyword I would get... what?.. 4--5 clicks a month? Not enough...
And if you have been producing content then you know the amount of time and investment it takes to make these any good. So 2 keywords that didn't seem to have any traction was irritating to say the least.
I kept thinking "what do I need to do?"
I've watched hours upon hours of videos explaining exactly how to set up your on page SEO, exactly how to set up your technical SEO, exactly how to find the keywords to write your articles about and still only 2 keywords!
But I had patience....
See, I have been following a path that I found while doing digital marketing research.
After hours of watching videos by marketing "gurus" claiming to solve all my problems in 10 minutes while making me a millionaire and getting me a stone massage at the same time, I was getting desperate to find some actual truth of what works and what doesn't.
And that's when I found Miles Beckler.
This man has been changing how I approach my entire website business.
Instead of giving me the classic pitches with fancy homes and cars, Miles was telling me I wasn't going to receive any results from his methods for at least 6 months!
He said it might even take up to a year!
He told me that it was a marathon and if you want to rank higher in search results that you put in a ton of hard work, do everything you are supposed to, and have faith in the system.
I believed him because he wasn't trying to sell my anything because...well... he literally is not trying to sell anything.
He doesn't have a course, a workshop, an event, a digital product... he doesn't have anything to actually sell anyone.
Every now and then he opens up his membership site for a limited time and then shuts down entrance.
So here is a guy that doesn't have anything to sell, is telling me I need to have at least 6 months of patience, and then giving me incredibly detailed advice on how to achieve success....
I had no choice but to trust him...
So I've been excercising all the patience I have for the past month and focusing on writing my blogs.
But like anything else in life I want to see some kind of result to make me feel a little better.
Well I was doing some more research on digital marketing and came across some article that mentioned the Google Search Console and I thought "I haven't looked at that in a bit"
so I went over and checked out my site.
When I got to the console I immediately recognized a problem... I only had 6 pages of my site listed and I had written about 35 blog posts at this point!
What this means is that Google had not "crawled" my blogs yet so all Google thinks is that I have 6 total pages of my site and it doesn't have a clue all my blog pages even existed.
So all the hours I spent slaving and grinding making these post had gone literally unnoticed by Google...
This was not very pleasing to find out!
I actually remember seeing this a while ago and thinking to myself "hmm... that doesn't look good, I'll need to fix that" and then never did anything about it!
Whether I am lazy or just forgetful still needs to be determined but it was clear that in order to get my blog articles ranking in Google that I would need Google to know they were actually there.
So one by one I began submitting my URLS to the Google Search Console so that I could request Google "crawl" my pages to they could be found.
How does one submit your URL to google?
1. Visit the URL that you want to submit to the Search Console and copy the URL
2. Log into your Google Search Console
3. Click into the URL field at the top of your screen and past the URL you copied in step 1 and press enter.
4. After several seconds Google will let you know if that URL has already been crawled or not. If it hasn't, click on the "Test Live URL" button in the top right of your screen.
5. You will see a message that it will take a minute or two in order to test the URL. Once it is done Google will let you know if it has recognized the URL and you will need to click on the "Request Indexing" button.
After completing step 5 you have successfully submitted your URL to be crawled by Google!
Google will crawl your site as requested but this can still take several days. Much better than waiting months...
When I did this to my site I saw changes within 24 hours and I was climbing the ranks for 10 different keywords!
I felt pretty dumb when I realized that I had completely forgotten to submit my site's URLs and that I was still expecting my pages to rank....
But when I got to see my hard work actually paying off and the long-term plan I had committed to showing me its worth and value for my business I didn't even care how dumb I felt!
I was seeing results! I can use this to show clients, I can actually help businesses grow their online presence, and I know how the system works and that is exactly what I needed in order to feel better about all the time I have put into this blog.
Besides, when you are trying to grow your business and worry about a million different tasks as well as keep your personal life in order, you are going to forget the small things.
If you have a blog, youtube channel, podcast, or other platform for your content then please comment with "Yes" and if you haven't started making any content for your audience yet then type "No'.
No one is in trouble if you haven't started! I want to check to see if you all are looking for help starting your content journey or if you need help growing your content reach.
Share or like this post if you also had no idea about the submitting URLs to the Console so others can learn from our mistakes!
Thanks and, as always, if you need any help or guidance I offer free 10-minute support sessions where we can identify your problems and head you in the right direction.
Raul Mercado
Mercado Wix Design