SEO (search engine optimization) is the key to being discovered online and an important element to connecting with your customers. There’s a joke in Digital Marketing industry that goes something like, the best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google Search Results. In fact, less than 1% of Google searches ever click on results from page 2. The #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%

Ensuring timely information is available for searchers is critical. Yet historically one of the biggest pain points for website owners has been to have search engines quickly discover and consider their latest website changes. It can take days or even weeks for new URLs to be discovered and indexed in search engines, resulting in loss of potential traffic, customers, and even sales.

IndexNow is a new protocol created by Microsoft Bing and Yandex, allowing websites to easily notify search engines whenever their website content is created, updated, or deleted. Using an API, once search engines are notified of updates they quickly crawl and reflect website changes in their index and search results.

Step 1: Generate API Key

Step 2: Submit URL to Microsoft Bing or Yandex

Microsoft Bing https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key

Yandex https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key

Step 3: Login to Bing Webmaster Tools

Index Now FAQ’s

If you’re submitting your URL’s on Yandex and Bing you should also submitted to the largest search engine, Google. To do this you need to set up your account on Google Search Console. If you’re using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress then you can download a plugin like Yoast. Once you’ve downloaded Yoast you’ll submit a sitemap. The sitemap will send all your url’s to Google so that the Google bot can crawl the pages.

Option 1. Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console

1. Log in to Google Search Console
2. Go to the right property
3. Click “Sitemaps” on the left menu
4. Paste in your sitemap URL
5. Click “Submit”

Below is an example:

If you don’t have GSC set up you can simply submit your Sitemap by pinging Google. Ex: https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=https://dadpreneur.co/post-sitemap.xml

You can find more information on submitting your url’s on Ahrefs Blog.