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If I write a blog post or add a new page to my website, the first thing I will be asked is to provide a headline for that. That is what the meta title is. 

Here is a simple example of a meta title:

But beyond that simplicity is potential, and it has to do with SEO:

• If you can have a GOOD meta title.
• If you can also use a keyword with it.
• If you can provide good content with all of this.

Then through the power of Google and SEO, you can drive a lot of visitors to your site. This is what I will show you how to do, correctly.

You see, it’s taken me many years, many corrections and many missed opportunities to truly appreciate how important meta titles are. If I had known what I am about to teach you, I would have gotten MILLIONS of more visitors to my websites and made a lot more money than I currently have.

But while I made the corrections and learned the lessons I am about to teach you, I don’t want you going through the same mistakes I did, so let me explain just how important it is that you GET this subject as well as I do now:

Why meta titles are so important for SEO:

There’s a very simple example I’m about to show you:

Suppose 100 bloggers create a blog, whose topic is exactly the same, but the content within each written blog post is unique.

99 of these bloggers decide to use the same boring headline while the 100th blogger decides to make his a bit more attractive. 

When all 100 of these bloggers publish their blog, and Google begins to crawl and see which of these blogs deserves to be ranked highest, there is a VERY high probability that the 100th person who decided to spice it up gets the highest position, and with that, the highest influx of traffic.

You see, the reason for this happening is because when people look for on Google for the content that those bloggers wrote about, they will be shown those blogs, but the person who has the best looking headline will be the ones which gets the most clicks and views, it will simply stand out above the other 99.

And as long as the 100th person who gets the most attention writes good content, the people who click on his blog to read it will provide positive feedback, that Google will then use to give that blog extra leverage in rankings. 

What does this mean? It means more traffic.

Most people who create sites and blogs don’t understand how important this concept is.

If you can be that 100th person and utilize meta titles correctly (as well as other metadata that’s also connected to titles), you have the chance to hook the majority of eyes which will see that content and as long as you keep giving the eyes that clicked on your blog more reason to read that blog, you will only see more rankings and traffic from Google as a result.

I really can’t go any deeper into how important this whole thing is. I suppose someone who lost millions in potential visitors to his site would truly relate and understand the potential of what I’m talking about here, but perhaps I’m just too focused on my past failures…

How to make sure you get meta titles and SEO right:

The simple idea is that you need to start with…

A highly searched keyword.

As long as your headline includes a keyword which MANY people type into Google, there’s a great chance that Google will give your site a chance to appear for that keyword and get as many eyes as possible viewing it. Now don’t neglect how important this is. 

I do not recommend that you ever write a new page or blog post on your site that doesn’t target a highly searched keyword. If you do, then odds are you will probably spend a lot of time writing content that never gets rankings for keywords which really matter for ranking, that being the ones which actually get searches.

But to really help this materialize…

You need to actually make the keyword better than it really is.

And it all happens in the meta title (a ranking factor). Take whatever keyword you found, but add more words to it to make that keyword sound and look better. Here are several examples that will speak for themselves:

I promise you that with strategies like these, you will really help improve the odds that Google gives your particular page/blog enough initial exposure for the keyword that enough audiences see it, click it and give you enough link juice to help it rank higher.

And as long as this rule is followed it with every new page/blog post you put out, you are going to really see more and faster traffic numbers coming into your site.

Again, go back to that example of the 100 bloggers. In connection with this tutorial, 99 bloggers are all targeting a highly searched keyword, but it’s that 1 other person who also targets it, but makes it look better in his headline that will succeed.

Note: Try to keep your headlines short. Long headlines generally do not get good SEO points.

And finally, beyond all of this, the content has to rock.

Meta titles are the hook to get people into the site, but then after that, the content you write is what will truly be the difference maker. 

You need to analyze all this info I gave you from a point of view of someone who is walking around a street and seeing a store/restaurant they want to go into.

Once they do, the store/restaurant better have good stuff in it to give the person who entered a good excuse to stay. 

That is exactly how you need to look at headlines and as a followup the content for it. If you can truly understand that, then you can truly experience the potential of high rankings in Google and the audiences it can bring in to your website.

Initially yes, but in the long run, no. These are the immediate answers to the question on whether or not WordPress tags help with SEO.

And in this article, I’ll give you my expert thoughts on this as it’s something I’ve thought about for years and have experience with, as well as cite other, even bigger experts who say the same thing.

So here you will get 3 expert opinions on this subject and they all basically say the same thing. But just so we’re all clear…

What are WordPress tags?

When you have a WP website, and create new pages or posts of content, you have the option to add tags to these things with every new article you create. Specifically these are “keyword tags”.

Here is an example:

Why is this even considered important for SEO?

The implication is that by filling these tags in with keywords for which you wish Google to rank you for, that it will actually do that and as a result you can just write up a plethora of keywords you wish to get rankings for, and it’ll be done.

There is this belief that once you publish a new page or post with content on WP, that when Google comes in, it not only looks at your content, your title and the keyword in it, but the keyword tags you included in the above image and based on what keywords you added there, it will rank you it.

This a nice thing to believe…

But is this really true? Let me explain why the answer is not really…

Allow me to be the 1st of the 3 SEO experts to explain why I personally don’t even use these things on my websites and yet I get high rankings with my targeted keywords most of the time. Now while you can USE them, do not overrate their importance, because in the end, they really aren’t that big of a deal to use.

Let me give you proof by showcasing one of my websites where the keywords it targets are listed in the title of the article and there is a lot of content for the said article, but there are NO tags associated with it, and yet it still does fine with the organic search results (SEO):

And if you think I’m lying about me not using any tags for the said keywords, let me show you screenshots of the actual area inside the WordPress site in question, the articles associated with the image above, and the fact that none of them use these:

If the rule about tags and SEO would apply, why are these articles I wrote getting such high rankings regardless? Clearly something is amiss…

Now one could argue that if I used tags with the said posts, that I’d get more traffic, but the truth is that in the end, you cannot tell Google, through THIS method at least, what to rank you for, it decides. All you can do is list the keyword in your title, try to write the best content possible and then hope for the best with them, that’s really the MAIN point here…

Now I know this doesn’t exactly sound like something an SEO expert would say and that there’s got to be a way to rank #1, all the time for any keyword you want, that’s the hope people have, but it’s not the right mindset. The SEO game does not work like this.

There’s one main reason for this:

Google’s ranking algorithm is far more advanced than you think.

It determines the BEST results (keyword searches) to rank your site for BASED on the title and CONTENT of the article (the most important metadata), and since the topic of this article is regarding tags, they really have very little to NOTHING to do in this whole ranking process.

If they did, people would just be writing the most competitive, highly searched keywords they could think about in the tags section and getting rankings for that, but you don’t determine that, Google does and it bases it on other parameters (content and keywords in the title mainly).

It’s like telling Google you “deserve” to get ranked for certain keywords, but then Google checks out your material (content) and determines you’re not worthy of that. If you are, you will need to show them that through your content and the keyword you’re targeting in the title.

Understand this and your SEO game will elevate…

Getting feedback from expert #2 on the subject:

There was a period when I used to think about this very same subject and be paranoid about it, so I reached out to an expert in this field, very recently actually, who happens to be one of the guys who taught me much of what I am sharing with you in this article today (and this website).

His name is Kyle and he has made millions from doing SEO.

Here was his response:

Now even though I consider myself an expert, I am very fortunate to have people like this, who know more than I do, steer me in the right path.

His answer pretty much solidified theory I had about this subject.

Now you may note that he said he still uses them on his site, but admits they mean very little so this goes back to the first answer I gave when I started this article, on how all this stuff has little to no effect on SEO, but you’re still welcome to use it.

Let’s see how the last expert (#3) sees this subject:

The last expert in this article who I am using to add credibility to my position is also VERY successful at the game of SEO. He does local marketing projects for clients.

In fact, I have used his techniques to help my clients as well. Here is a local case study I literally just wrote on a few days ago.

In addition he also works with Kyle (expert #2) in the same organization that ALL of us are a part of and in that organization, he provides lessons on SEO to the community. I have learned much from this guy too, his name is Jay Niell. 

But now that we got his resume out of the way, let me explain a few things about him and this subject:

Now I have to say that I’ve never actually seen Jay’s specific position and statement on tags being used in WordPress sites, BUT I have gone through several of his SEO tutorials and seen his site personally and the clues in those areas show me what his position on this subject is:

First of all, Jay runs a website which I look at sometimes and I have never seen him use those things in his articles. This is clue #1.

Clue #2 is that in the SEO tutorials Jay provides, especially the ones where he provides a list of things necessary to rank high in Google, tags are NEVER mentioned (here is a good list that both he and I use on our sites). 

It is because of these 2 things that I believe Jay’s position on this subject is at the very least like mine and/or like Kyle’s and being that we all come from the same SEO training background, this is also another reason to assume what we do. But if he comes to this site and comments on it himself, that will really solidify that 🙂

Conclusions:

I am absolutely certain that you are going to find SEO people who will claim that our positions are wrong and that we should be doing the opposite in this case.

But considering that all 3 of us make good money from SEO, we probably are doing something right and the last thing we’d want to do in this case is leave money on the table, so if there was a truly good reason to use tags on your WordPress site, believe me, we would be doing it.

• But I’ve personally shown you my results from NOT using them.
• I’ve explained Kyle’s position who earns millions from his SEO work.
• And I’ve also shown you the results and training tutorials of another SEO expert I talk to.

We all say the same thing basically. But even in spite of all of this, you are still paranoid about not using these things, just do it, they will not negatively impact your SEO results anyway, just don’t prioritize them, focus on the main SEO parameters I listed.

The truth about rankings on Google is that 99% of the time, they will be too low to get you good traffic. But I’ll show you my 15 proven ways to improve them.

Here’s just a small sample of some of the high positioned pages I have occupied thanks to these methods:

Now originally, this guide had 10 ways listed on how to improve your search engine rankings, especially on Google, but I did improve upon that and added 5 more important ones. I follow these 15 guidelines every single time for the following circumstances:

• Either I’ll have an existing page that isn’t ranking well enough and a considerable time has passed to know that it won’t go any higher.
• Or I’ll make sure that a new page of content I create has all of the things checked off on it to basically maximize the odds that it’ll hit the first page and even first spot on Google.

Yet, despite these insured ways of doing SEO (it’s pretty much the most important things you can do), I will still admit to you (any legitimate SEO expert will admit this too), that it’s still IMPOSSIBLE to rank on the first spot or page on Google for every single keyword you attempt to do it for.

And this is especially the case for the more higher volume/higher competition keywords you try to appear for. So moving forward, I need you to understand that while my approach WORKS, its not a complete guarantee.

However, any improvement to your existing, bad rankings is better than nothing right?

Well if you agree with this, and you want to get more traffic, then I promise you, my 10 ways WILL help you get closer to that at the very least, and at the very most, you’ll still get more traffic than you did before. I’m certainly practicing these methods, and I wouldn’t be doing it, if I knew they were a waste of time, so you already know I’m not aiming to waste yours…

Again, there’s actually 15 methods (There’s a video below showing them for extra help):

The first 10 methods are actually an insurance to make sure your page does as best as it can in the SERPS initially, and the next 5 methods will actually explain what to do if the first 10 aren’t enough to do it, which MAY happen.

So consider the extra 5 methods as extra insurance. More methods used = more chances of higher positions, and who would be against that?

Anyway here are the first 10:

Now if ANY of these 10 things I just listed are new to you are things you do not understand or need more clarity on, I’ve got great news:

Read this post where I literally detail each one and explain how they IMPROVE positioning on Google.

The fact of the matter is that each of these things I just listed are all ensuring that you’re producing high quality content on your page that is optimized for both Google to spot it and rank it easily, and when people read it, to have them have an enjoyable reading experience that is noted by Google, to also help push it further up in the SERPS.

These are current, past and future trends you WILL want to practice for great SEO results.

Now this is what I want you to do (good homework for you):

1) Go through every single article you have on your site, and optimize it according to those 10 things. Make absolutely sure you are NOT changing ANY permalink on ANY page (method 2 on the list), because if you do, you are going to create 404 errors.

So just don’t touch it, only change the title and content, but leave the link (permalink) intact.

2) As you create NEW content (and you need to if you wish to get higher rankings for the site and past pages), ALSO use these 10 tips whilst it’s being made, then publish it once you know the new article you created has all 10 tips included.

Next, only use the next 3 methods if…

Your site is OVER 6 months old.

If your site is NOT this old, and you updated your old and new articles with the methods above, do not touch them, just optimize it once and leave it alone while publishing new articles.

What happens to sites that are under 6 months old is that they are in the Google Sandbox, and until that period passes, it won’t matter how much you optimize your pages, they will not rank well. So while you should use these 10 tips I gave on existing and new pages, if your site is in the Google Sandbox, ONLY optimize it once, then leave it alone.

A lot of people do not know about the sandbox and expect a new site to rank high, early. This will NOT happen until 6 months pass, so let that period go by, then see if the rankings pick up. If they do, just don’t touch it and let it pick up organically.

You did the 10 things, your site is not in the sandbox, but you’re still not ranking high.

Let’s say I published content following the 10 guidelines and I did it after my site was no longer in the sandbox. Now I’ll wait at least a month and track the rankings.

How do you track keyword rankings? Here’s one free option.

If I see that it’s very stagnant (not rising at all), I will implement the next 5 following methods I’ll describe to you.

Here are the next 5 methods:

Do note that you don’t need to do all 5, but the more of them that you do, the better it’ll impact the positioning of your page.

1) Create a YouTube video and link it to the page that isn’t ranking well.

YouTube itself is an awesome place to create content and allows you to link those videos to any page you want. For SEO and ranking purposes, link the video/s you create to the page that needs a boost. Obviously, make sure your videos are actually high quality in how the content is presented. 

What happens here is that this method provides an extra, high quality backlink to your particular page that needs SEO help. I have a very good example to share with you where I did this very thing for a client and it helped his website climb to the first page.

You can also create multiple YouTube videos and link it to the same page if necessary.

For example:

Let’s suppose I write an article on 10 body language signs that show lies and the article follows through with the 10 tips laid out above.

The site it’s on is over 6 months, and after publishing this article, a month goes by and I find that the article isn’t doing well in Google, and that it hasn’t experienced any improvement. 

What I’ll do is, I’ll go to YouTube, create a video on the same subject and then link it to the very same article. That’s how this method works.

2) Publish new content and interlink it to the one/s which aren’t ranking well.

If there is one method I suggest you use to get higher rankings for your site overall, it’s to frequently publish new content. It creates new opportunities for your page to rank for other keywords and being that the more you do this, there’s more chances that more of this new content created will actually rank on the first page.

In fact, if I do everything I listed on this article and it still doesn’t raise it high enough to hit page 1 spots, I’ll keep publishing new content and finding other keywords to rank for. At least this way, I will continue to grow my site and it’s rankings.

But the purpose of this specific method, besides being good for SEO overall, is that the new content created itself should follow the 10 tips I outlined, particularly tip #5, which is internally linking and in this case, internally linking to the very same article/post that we want to get ranked higher.

3) Open up a comments section, add a share button, and encourage shares and comments within your article.

This method should itself be mandatory for every article you create, but you’d be surprised to know how people literally leave these things out of their websites and it literally can cause rankings to tank. Make sure whatever settings you use on your website (WordPress is my preferred option since it makes this easy) allow for people to actually comment on your content and share it.

Opening up the site itself for comments is literally something that takes a few clicks.

Adding the option to share the content you make is literally just adding a plugin that makes it pop up on your site. On my page, I am using the Social Pug plugin.

This very action improves rankings:

4) Improve the content (in it’s quality and in it’s quantity).

Many people who post content tend to overrate the value and quality of it and if you see that the content you post isn’t doing well, one reason why is because it needs to improve it’s quality. There’s nothing wrong with going back into a post/article that already doesn’t do well on Google and…

• Redoing it.
• Deleting sections of it and adding new, updated info.
• Just adding new content to it.

For example, suppose you reviewed a product that you rated well and news comes out that it’s bad. You would want to update your article in that case to reflect the updated information, because if people read your article and see the information is outdated (due to the news), they will negatively view your content and leave, which will affect Google rankings.

When you make these changes, you are taking steps to improve the content of the article and that already gives it better chances to get higher positions than it did before. I still do this day, look at old articles I’ve written and sometimes update them.

5) When all the changes are made, use Google fetch option.

If significant changes are made to an existing article/post you have that wasn’t doing well, make sure you let Google know about it by using the fetch tool. They will find it faster this way and while it will basically “reset” the process of the article/post ranking, it’ll set it up to have higher and better chances of hitting higher positions this time around.

These 15 methods will 100% raise your rankings, but…

Like I said before, they will NOT 100% guarantee that this rise will make the page/s hit page 1 or position 1 on Google. It is very important to know there is no such site that literally occupies position 1 on Google for every single keyword it attempts to chase.

Know that if you did not get the desired results, and that the page, despite these 15 methods did not hit the first page/spot, that you should not worry about it and continue to focus on method 12 (build up more content).

I find that many people dwell far too much on having one page with 1 targeted keyword rank high and if it doesn’t, they overspend too much time and energy trying to make it rise, when at the same time, that effort could be put to writing more content, publishing it for other keywords and getting the traffic from those efforts.

Remember, if it doesn’t rank high despite the effort you put in, let it go and continue to build the site through other keywords you’re targeting, and make sure all of them are also following the same 10 original methods.

You will find that this approach will build up your SEO, your rankings and grow your site beyond what you expected, trust me!

I’ve got another great tip for improving your Google Rankings: Updating dates.

One of the SEO experts I consult with has been suggesting that whenever you go back and make edits to previous articles or blogs on your site, that you should also update the date of that post, before you fetch it again, to show Google that you’ve made changes and updates to it. 

Now while Google will see itself (without the date change) that you’ve done this, from a visual perspective, it helps the reader see that the article they are reading isn’t that old. Plus, this same individual who I trust showed me a number of cases where this updated date method has helped his pages improve in ranking on Google.

Changing dates (updating them) should only be done if you indeed make true updates to the said content that you wish to get to rank higher. So for example, as I made edits and updates to this article (adding in the new tip), I am going to change the date this article was originally published which was on March 18th, 2019 to April 20th, 2019, aka when the edits were made. 

So just for reference, here’s ALL 15 methods listed out:

Update: I’ve created a video listing all 15 methods:

And just so you see that these methods DO work, here’s one of my websites which I’ve been applying this too (individually across each page and post):

And for this site, I have barely been putting up new content. The MAIN focus I had was optimizing my old posts and this is actually still considered a form of creating NEW, improved content, which counts just as equally for your rankings. 

Today I want to share an SEO case study in which I helped a client who runs a local small business (a self defense school) attain tons of new clients.

Basically what I did was, I optimized his website, his ads and gave him a few personal tips, which he used and as a result, many people within his business area were able to find him. 

As a result his business grew substantially and even today, there continues to be a substantial trickle of traffic and new clients coming in because his website’s SEO improved, and the business became more exposed to people looking for martial arts training in the area where the school is.

And thanks to him being happy, huge opportunities to work with other clients arose for me too, allowing me options to do SEO work for them.

In this case study, I will detail the exact things I did for this client, as well as offer personal tips you can use for your local business if you’re seeking to get online exposure, but in your specific area.

First, let me explain how it all came about…

I started training at this self defense school in 2009. After a few months of being a member there and enjoying the environment and what I was learning, I slowly began to get to know the head owner of it. We had several conversations for a reason I can’t remember, the topic of online marketing came up.

Being that I was already experienced and having success in SEO as well as using services like Adwords (Google Ads), I offered to give him a free consultation, which is one of the many great ways to get clients. He agreed, and I asked him for a day or two to take a look at his website (which he already had up for at least a year).

So I looked over his site…

And it didn’t take me long to analyze it and see that a number of huge mistakes were being made. In short, he could have been getting way more traffic than he already was.

Without going too in-depth into each problem…

Let me summarize the 3 main issues I saw on his website:

1) For starters, his school taught several different self defense arts, and there was only one page in which ALL of these arts were listed. Keep this in mind because I’ll explain how changing this part of the site resulted in his traffic stats increasing by well over 10 times! 

2) Then there was the part where he was advertising his website on Google Ads. Looking over his campaigns, his keywords, his targeting methods and how much he was spending, my hairs stood up, because in just about every single front, he was doing it wrong and overpaying substantially.

He could have been spending 90% less on ads and bringing in 10x more traffic from that as well (in addition to the free traffic from the first point).

3) Third, for one reason or another he had a YouTube video he made that was promoting his small business, which actually accumulated over 100,000 views!

I don’t recall how he did it, but the problem here was this video wasn’t linking anywhere and this was lost traffic, a lost, quality backlink that he could have been using to grow his website’s authority.

I’ll leave the other issues out of this case study, because frankly, they mean very little to these 3 and just by correcting the 3 I mentioned, the website grew in both organic and paid traffic by several times, ad costs were cut like crazy and as a result, the website started receiving a lot of traffic, which years later is still coming in at a healthy pace.

Here’s what I fixed:

1) For the first problem in which all the self defense arts were listed on one page, I told him to separate them all. In other words, dedicate one self defense art to one page and on it, write extensively on the art, and how his business, in his local area teaches it. The minimum word requirement I set was 400 words or more.

Within each page, I made it clear to provide bold headings of the art and the area it’s taught in. Why? Because for SEO, when someone in his area looks up the art, the results provided will be local and thus his page will show up.

This was repeated for every art. Now instead of having 1 page worth of content, he now had 5 or more, each with it’s own separate focus, and each ranking on Google for the specific art, in the specific area. Beautiful.

2) Second, I cleaned up his Google Ads by just pausing his entire existing campaign he set up. I didn’t erase it because I wanted to show him how my changes would compare to his and then to choose which one he wanted more.

Basically, I targeted VERY specific keywords pertaining to ONLY people looking for self defense training (in his area ONLY) and linked each ad I created to the appropriate page on his website. His costs went down substantially and his clicks rose significantly.

3) And finally, I told him to provide a simple link on YouTube video which got the 100,000 views back to his website. This also improved his SEO. And it was a good backlink.

Overall the results were huge, and it was all done through simple SEO methods that didn’t take look to update on his site. He still maintains his superiority over the competition today because of the things that were done YEARS ago.

Important SEO updates since this local case study happened:

Back when I fixed this site, there weren’t as many requirements for a local business to succeed in SEO as it is today.

So in this part of the case study, I want to include updates on what the business did (and what you should do as well if you run a local business) to keep growing the site’s traffic and success…

Just a quick note…the same changes I made on the site back then, I would still make today and they would still be JUST as important, it’s just that a few extra ingredients are needed in local SEO success today to further those results, and here they are:

Citations. 

If you run a local business, an absolute must today is setting up citations. These are networks and sites where your business is mentioned. The most important places I’d start with are: 

Once you do that, if possible, get existing customers to rate it high your business high (right on all of those sites if possible). Note, there is an update on Google+ you need to read.

This will help it rank better in Google when customers look up your business and/or the subject relating to your business in your area. I would suggest emailing them and asking them to just give your business a rating, then providing a link to the citation site where your business is listed.

The more good reviews you get, the better it looks overall for other customers who would see and consider your business.

If you would like to see/hear about more case studies I’ve done for clients/myself or have your personal questions on how to recreate this success with your local business, let me know 🙂

Using fetch as Google has become an automatic habit for me every time I publish something new on one or more of my sites. Today I will be showing how to do this too.

Not only is it easy, but it’s also extremely beneficial for SEO. In fact, I think this tool needs to be used on all websites!

Update: New Fetch tool has been released by Google…

It is now know as the “URL Inspection” and I have updated the instructions on how to use the tool below.

Do you know what fetch as Google is?

It’s a really awesome tool inside the free Webmaster Tools program. It basically makes Google itself come to any page or post you have on your site that you tell it to go to, crawl it and index it very quickly. You can have a new post be on the search engine within hours as a result of this, which is WAY faster than going about it without using it.

Here’s why this is such a great tool (besides the speed of it all):

When you JUST start a website (the beginning stage), every new page or post of content you publish will take several days and even weeks to get that crawl and index from Google. It’s part of the sandbox stage and during which it’s almost like you’re waiting in line behind other websites in a queue. 

Even when your website becomes more noticed, indexed and ranked (the mid stage), it can still take days for that initial index to happen. And to reach that mid point can take several month.

In the late stages of your website maturity, when it’s doing well, indexes can happen in as quickly as hours. It can almost get to a point where you don’t even need to use the fetch option, it just happens too quickly to even worry about it.

While the late stage is where you want to get to with your website, the fact is, it can take many months to reach that point and how much lag and wait there is to get those indexes in the beginning and mid stages can add up all on it’s own.

Without the fetch as Google tool, you could be wasting months.

That being months in total waiting time for your site to get crawled and indexed from the beginning to mid stages.

Here’s 2 examples that will really drive home how important this tool is:

Let’s say we have 2 people, John and Sarah, each with their own websites. Both these people write 1 article a day on their websites (which is great for SEO), but while John uses the fetch tool, Sarah does not, and thus this is what happens:

As soon as John publishes a new article, he heads over to Webmaster Tools, uses the fetch tool and within hours, that article is indexed and then the ranking growth begins.

As soon as Sarah publishes a new article, she doesn’t do anything else. And it takes Google days to find her content and index it. 

As a result, John is already days ahead of her in the index and ranking process and if you keep adding the time lag that accumulates each time, while both these 2 publish articles continuously, eventually John is going to be months ahead of Sarah as time goes on.

So yeah, this kind of simple example is really eye opening of how important this tool is, especially for newer websites and blogs. 

Ok, let’s do this. Let me show you how to use fetch as Google (skip this part, it’s outdated!):

Note: Go to the next section for the updated instructions.

First, create a webmaster tools account.

Second, register your website on that program and verify it.

Third, each time you create new content on your site, head over to Webmaster Tools, go to the crawl option, enter the URL of the new post you put up and you’re good to go.

And like I said, this is the process I follow on ALL my new content, across all my sites. The only times I neglect to do this is when I have a late stage site that’s already doing well in Google, in which case, the indexing happens almost as quickly. 

Update: How to use the new fetch as Google tool (this is the updated option):

Firstly, this has been renamed as the “inspection tool” in webmaster tools so this is what I will refer to it from here on out:

Some preliminary instructions are still the same, such as:

You still need to 1) Sign up with Webmaster tools and 2) You have to verify your site with Webmaster tools before you can use the inspection (fetch) tool. When you have this done, here are the updated instructions:

1) Head over to Webmaster Tools and simply paste the URL in the top middle of the WMT search bar you wished to get fetched:

2) Once you paste it, a message will appear saying that it’s testing to see if the URL is actually indexed on Google or not.

• If you just wrote a new article, it will say it’s not.
• If you did write an article and it’s indexed, you can still fetch it as long as you updated it with new content.

Either way, once the inspection is complete, you will have an option (in both scenarios) to “request indexing”. Click it, wait a minute or two and it will tell you that it’s been submitted:

And that’s all you need to do. It’s actually an easier option with this new console than the old one.

Is there any backlash SEO effect from using this tool?

I don’t know about you, but I once had this paranoia where I felt that if I published content too quickly and used this tool, too much, that this would somehow penalize my site and my SEO for this. 

If you have a similar worry, the short answer to this though is: No, this will not happen. Just don’t submit the same URL too many times, once is really enough.

You will not have any negative SEO effects on your site if you use fetch tool and if you want to dig deeper and find out why, the answer is that…

Google itself created this program with the intent that you use it. In fact, they want you to use it so much that they give you a “limit” of 500 times that you can use this tool, a MONTH.

Why would they penalize you if they have such a tremendous limit available to you? They wouldn’t, they want you to use it, so do it 🙂

The only things that would have an adverse affect on your SEO is if your actual website was doing things which Google doesn’t like and that’s a whole other topic I will be discussing on this site, but at a later time.

Two final important message about using this tool:

The first message:

Perhaps you already picked up on it, or perhaps not, but what you need to know is that this tool only works in line with you creating content on your site. There’s no point in using this if you don’t write and publish new articles and there’s certainly no need to use the fetch tool on an existing article, that’s already indexed.

So if you are going to use this tool to it’s fullest extent, it has to be through creating and publishing content on a consistent basis and THEN applying this tool. Only then will you be able to get the desired SEO results from all of this.

The second message:

Throughout this article, I have used the word “index” and I have also used the word “ranking” and in my YouTube video which I shared in this article, I explained the difference, but there may be a chance you didn’t see it. 

In any case, here’s the difference:

Do note, that indexing HAS to happen before ranking can begin. This tool expedites the indexing, thereby making the ranking happen faster, naturally.

Knowing this, do not worry if you get your new content indexed, but can’t find it in Google, it’s normal and takes time to rank. Remember, the fetch tool does NOT rank your content high, it simply indexes it faster, allowing the ranking to happen faster. This is a message many people misinterpret all the time.

Another tip I like to include is that I’ll usually wait at least a few months to see if the ranking for the article I fetched are high and if they are not, I will run the same article through these 15 adjustments, and then use the same URL inspection tool. This is a great strategy that improves my rankings.

Have any questions regarding fetching your site with webmaster tools, indexing, ranking and/or any other things discussed in this topic? Comment below and get the answers!

P.S. I just published this article. Guess what I’ll be doing next? I think we all know 🙂