IndexMeNow Indexing Service Review

In this article, I talk about my experiences using IndexMeNow, a French-owned indexing service that helps SEOs and agencies to index troublesome URLs and backlinks.

In April 2022, I launched a new website as part of a case study for everybody to follow along. I researched a niche and hired skilled writers to produce incredible content. I personally optimized each article with my optimization checklist and requested indexing on Google Search Console. 

After 25 articles and 3 weeks of no indexing, I started to scratch my head. I know these things take patience, but I also know at least some pages should be indexed by now. I decided to wait a little longer.

After 50 articles and 2 months of no indexing, I started to look for solutions.

But first, a little refresher...

What Is Indexing?

Indexing is the process of getting your web pages recognized by Google. A web page cannot show up in search results unless it is part of Google's index, or recognized web pages. You can understand why it is so important to have your web pages indexed. 

If your pages don't show up in search results, you won't get any traffic. Simple.

What Is An Indexing Service?

An indexing service provides a custom solution for greatly increasing the odds of having your web pages indexed. There are many methods for "forcing" indexation. An indexing service will perform a cocktail of proven methods, typically charging you a fee for each URL.

I'll cover indexing methods further in this article.

Why Use An Indexing Service?

Publishing web content is an investment. It doesn't matter whether you're publishing service pages, product reviews, or covering a timely topic that is riding on the coattails of a hot new trend.

That content needs to be discoverable and accessible. Now.

When it comes to Google, there are often periods of "tough indexing" each year.

When I was experiencing indexing issues for my site, I figured we were in one of these periods. I spoke to other SEOs and niche site enthusiasts who were experiencing the same issue. Some people were having no issues at all, with their brand new websites indexing hundreds of new pages without issue.

What made this more frustrating was hearing about programmatic SEO projects that were indexing thousands of pages each day.

The problem was becoming clear: my site was very low in the priority queue.

Even with high quality content, proper on-page optimization, and a strong internal linking structure, my pages were not being indexed. 

Using IndexMeNow To Speed Up Indexing

When I was experiencing indexing issues for myself, I was quite vocal about it on my Twitter account. A rep from IndexMeNow contacted me and recommended for me to try their service. I was eager to start seeing some results from all my efforts and decided to give them a shot.

To setup an account with them, visit their homepage and click the green Login button.

Next, you'll click on "Need an account?" This will take you to a form where you'll enter your basic account information.

Fill in the account information as you would when creating an account for any other website. Once you've completed the form, agree to the terms of service and click "Register".

You may be asked to verify your e-mail address.

Important Note: My verification email was not being sent when I registered. I had to get in touch with their customer service to have my account manually activated. If this happens to you, just contact them about it. They're very quick to respond.

Use the e-mail address: contact@indexmenow.com

Once your account has been created, login using your account name and password. You'll be taken to a dashboard with several options in the left sidebar. Before we do anything, we'll need to buy some credits.

Click on Buy credits.

If you're just testing out their service, you'll be fine with the Starter package, which gives you 60 credits, or 60 URLs. This comes to about $0.82 per URL. If you think you'll need more, then by all means buy the bigger package.

When you go to purchase your credits, you have the option to Enter Promotional Code.

I've worked out a discount code with them, so you can save 10% when you use the code KRYSIK10. This supports my blog and gives you a better price, so be sure to use the code!

After making the payment, allow a short time for the credits to appear in your account. If for some reason they don't appear after some time, just contact their support. They'll sort it out  for you quickly.

Now that you have some credits in your account, we're ready to index some URLs. Click on My Projects (1) in the left sidebar and then New Project (2) in the top right corner. This will take you to the order page.

On the order page, you'll need to enter a Project name for your order as well as the URLs you wish to index for this order. Each URL is to be placed on their own line. Each URL will require 1 credit available in your account. 

You can add up to 2,000 URLs on this order page. If you need to submit more, you can upload a TXT file with your URLs in the same format (one per line).

Click Save and your order will start processing.

You can view the progress of your project/order by going to the My Projects tab and clicking on the project. Here, you will see a key pieces of information:

• Indexable? - Is this URL indexable? They will send a scraper to see if it receives a HTTP 200 response code that verifies this URL can be reached. Then, it makes sure the URL does not have no-index in it's meta-robots tag.
• Indexing Status - This will show a yellow box and say Request In Progress until the order is complete. Once it is complete, it will appear as a green box saying Indexed.
• In Progress - Shows that the order is being worked on.
• Add new links - If at any time you decide to add more links to this project, you can do so here. This will take you to a similar order page as before. Simply add more links, one per line, and click Save.

When your order is complete, you will see the page's title and description as it shows in the SERPs. This is provided by their own index checking service. With every URL you order, you get a free index check, which is used to confirm your order has been delivered.

Dealing with Indexing Issues

For many, the dreaded "Discovered - currently not indexed" issue is becoming rampant. This means that Google knows about your URLs and understands that you are awaiting indexing. Google is choosing not to index your pages. 

So, what can you do about it?

There is a number of reasons for why you're struggling with indexing your URLs on Google SERP. Many of them can be fixed on your own, some of them are out of your control.

• Thin, Poor Quality Content - Google can tell if your content is helpful or not. If you're not adding some kind of value, then you're not going to get indexed. This usually applies to pages that don't have enough content or the content was stolen/copied.
• Not Relevant Enough - You can have great content, but what does it mean? The easiest way to build relevance is to use internal linking. When you use anchor text in your linking, you are explicitly telling Google what a web page is about.
• Harmful/Hateful Content - Google will NOT index any content that condones hate speech or incites violence. This also applies to any medical or financial advice that could hurt somebody. This falls under the category of Your Money, Your Life (YMYL). 
• Poorly Optimized Content - You have to remember that Google is a machine. A robot that is designed to consume data as quickly as possible. To Google, web pages are just data, and data can only be stored if it's structured accordingly. Format your content so Google can digest it. This is called on-page optimization.

Methods Of Forcing Indexation

As mentioned earlier, there are many methods of indexing a URL. I won't provide you with an in-depth guide here, but I'll name off a few methods that people like to use for getting their URLs indexed.

• Search Console - The URL inspection tool allows you to request indexing. It's the most legitimate way of getting your pages indexed, but it's not reliable.
• Social Signals - Not everyone believes it to be true, but social signals can trigger a burst of referral traffic to your site. If shared enough, you can receive "social backlinks", which can show up on some web pages that are indexed. If those pages are crawled, you might get indexed with them.
• Backlinks - Pages that are already indexed will be re-crawled from time to time. If your URL is present on those pages, you may trigger a crawl of your URL as well. Some websites get indexed faster, too. Getting a do-follow backlink can help you get crawled faster.
• YouTube Method - YouTube videos get indexed as soon as they're published. It is possible to include your URL in the description of a YouTube video to piggyback the instant indexing. There are more complex methods for using YouTube for indexing, and some indexing services do use it.
• Gmail - Including a URL in an email that is hosted on Google's mail servers can trigger a crawl of that URL.
• Google Drive - Including a URL in a Google Doc or Sheet can also trigger a crawl of said URL.