4+ Effective Methods Of Indexing Backlinks In Google [2024 update]

What Does Indexing Backlinks in Google Mean, Exactly?

Indexing backlinks in Google is a process of Google discovering and adding backlinks to its index — i.e., a database it uses to show information in its search results.

Is Backlink Indexing Important?

Yes, backlink indexing is important.

👉 Your backlinks won’t bring you SEO benefits if Google doesn’t index them.

In other words, your backlinks won’t increase your site’s credibility, rankings, or traffic — which is usually the whole point of getting them in the first place. 

But how do backlinks get indexed in general? Here’s a quick walkthrough of the process.

How Do Backlinks Get Indexed?

Backlinks get discovered and, potentially, indexed together with the pages that contain them.

So, if your backlinks are placed on an unindexed page, they won’t be indexed either. And vice versa — if your backlinks are placed on an already-indexed page, they’ll get indexed, too. 

👉 With that in mind, you always want the pages that host your backlinks to get indexed as fast as possible.

The only problem is that this can take anywhere between a few days and a few months.

Luckily, there are methods you can use to help search engines discover and crawl the pages with your links faster. This means they'll also index these pages - and, more importantly, your backlinks - more quickly.

The only exceptions to this rule are pages with errors. Such pages probably won’t get indexed no matter how hard you try until these errors are eliminated.

2 Basic Methods For Indexing Backlinks in Google

Although Google can index backlinks on its own, i.e., with no manual effort on your part, there are two methods you can use to nudge it to get started.

Both methods aim to get Google to review the pages that host your links faster. 

You can do so by submitting their URLs through: 

• Google Search Console 
• A link indexing service 

The first method only works if you can access the site hosting your backlinks through Google Search Console. That means you’ll probably need to own that site or be given access by the real site owner. 

There are also some additional pros and cons of each method you should be aware of. We’ll discuss them in more depth below – so let’s dive in.

1. Using Google Search Console

As mentioned, you’ll need to connect Google Search Console (GSC) with the site hosting your backlinks for this method. If you can't do this, check method #2. 

Now, if you meet the prerequisites, let’s see how you can get your backlinks indexed. 

Start by entering the URL hosting the links you want to index in the inspection bar at the top: 

From there, you’ll encounter one of two scenarios.

The first is that your URL will turn out to already be on Google, i.e., indexed. 

In that case, your backlink probably got indexed together with that page. We’ll show you how you can double-check this further down in the guide. 

But, for now, there’s nothing more you can do with GSC. Feel free to check another URL or jump to the next section of this guide.

Alternatively, you may see a message saying that the URL is not on Google:

This means your backlink isn’t indexed either. To get both your page and your backlink indexed, click “Request indexing.”

Wait for a few seconds. If the page you’re trying to index doesn’t have any errors that need to be addressed first, you should receive the following message:

If that’s the case, congrats! You’ve just successfully submitted your page and backlink for indexing.

Give Google around a week to do so. If your backlink still hasn’t been indexed by then, check if your page has any newly discovered errors you need to address. 

If you can’t index your page, eliminate the errors first and then re-submit it.

Pros:

• Free
• Gives you complete control

‍Cons:

• Only works if your GSC account is connected to the site hosting your links
• Only gets your backlinks indexed on Google, not other search engines

2. Using A Link Indexing Service

Alternatively, you can get your backlinks indexed by using professional link indexing services. 

They aren’t free, but they may be your only option if you want to index backlinks hosted on sites you can’t access via GSC. They also have some other pros we’ll discuss below. 

For now, let’s mention a few popular link indexing services. Many people recommend:

• Indexification,
• ‍BacklinksIndexer, and
• ‍Lindexed.

To be completely transparent, we’ve never used these services ourselves.

However, they do promise end-to-end backlink indexing services, including pinging, creating RSS feeds, XML sitemaps, and additional “secret” services. 

Still, we suggest you play it safe for starters and test the waters with OneHourIndexing. To our knowledge, they’re the only link indexing service provider offering a free trial.

Simply submit the URLs you want to index and see what happens. 

Pros: 

• Great for mass backlink indexing
• Works even if you don’t can’t access a site via GSC
• Also works for backlinks coming from social media or other sites you don’t own
• Can index your backlinks on multiple search engines and not just Google

‍Cons:

• Can be costly
• Sites look suspicious

4 Extra Ways for Indexing Backlinks in Google

The above two methods showed how you can “nudge” Google in the right direction by manually submitting your backlinks for indexing. 

However, there are a few more things you can do to further speed up the process. Let’s go over them one by one.

1. Create Internal Links

Similarly to the GSC method, this technique will only work if your backlinks are hosted on a site you own or can otherwise access. 

If so, you can speed up the indexing process by creating internal links to the pages with your backlinks — i.e., by adding links to the pages you want to index from other pages on your site. 

It sounds complicated, but it isn’t. 

Let us show you an example. 

We recently wrote a blog post about link wheels. That post links to another post about pitching to bloggers. Both posts – or pages – are on our website, so the link in question is internal.

Here’s what it looks like:

To maximize your efforts with this technique, make sure to use descriptive anchor texts – i.e., anchor texts that accurately describe the content of the target page and, preferably, include your main target keyword.

2. Create External Links

But what if your backlinks are not on a website you can access and edit? Or if you just want to further speed up the indexing process?

Well, in that case, you can do what you’ve originally done: build external backlinks.

The only difference is that this time, you should build external links pointing to the page that contains your backlink—not the page you originally linked to. 

While this is certainly an option, and we like giving you options, we do think it’s an overkill.

This is especially true if your backlink is placed on a website you don’t own. If that’s so, you’re essentially building backlinks for someone else. And that doesn’t make a lot of sense. 

Besides that, your backlinks should get indexed fairly fast if you implement other strategies we’ve mentioned. There’s really no need to build more backlinks.

Well, at least not high-quality ones that you usually need to pay for. 

Low-quality backlinks that you can get pretty easily, on the other hand, may be useful and are definitely more viable.

3. Build More Low-Quality Backlinks

Even low-quality backlinks can help pages and the backlinks they contain get indexed faster. 

Probably the easiest way to build them is to share links to the page you want to index on social media. 

‍Want a pro tip? Let your readers help you by adding social share buttons to the pages you’re trying to index. The easier you make it for your audience to share your content, the likelier they are to do it.

4. Notify The Search Engines

The last thing to try is notifying the search engines of new content – and backlinks – on a website. This is an old-school technique that, admittedly, no longer works as well as it used to. 

Still, it’s worth a shot – especially because there are a ton of pages that allow you to do so for free.   

Our favorite one is PingFarm. It’s pretty straightforward: simply copy and paste the URLs you want search engines to crawl, and hit the mass ping button below.

If you want, you can also add some additional details, such as your target keyword or RSS URL.

Below, you can also see which services PingFarm will ping.

Use ping services wisely, though. Creating too many pings in a short timeframe can raise a red flag with search engines – and potentially label your site as spammy. 

How To Check If Your Backlinks Are Indexed

So, you’ve taken all the steps we’ve described above. Kudos to you! 

Now, how can you check if your backlinks are actually indexed? We’ve got a couple of ideas.

1. Check The Google Index Manually

The easiest way to check if your backlinks are indexed is to copy and paste the hosting URL into Google. If Google doesn’t return any relevant results, your backlink has not yet been indexed – and vice versa. 

Unfortunately, this method only allows you to check one backlink and search engine at a time. 

Checking whether multiple backlinks are indexed on multiple search engines would probably take more time than you can afford to spend. In that case, it may be wise to invest in specialized tools.

2. Use Specialized Tools

Tools like Monitor Backlinks let you check the indexing status of multiple backlinks at once.

As far as we know, there’s currently no free tool offering this functionality. But the investment may be worth it if you’re serious about link building. 

Without knowing whether your backlinks are indexed or not, you have no way to gauge your progress – and doing so using the copy-and-paste method above will quickly become tiresome.

Do Some Backlinks Get Indexed Faster Than Others?

Yes, some backlinks do get indexed faster than others. In general, backlinks that get indexed the fastest share these few common characteristics:

• They’re hosted on sites with high domain authority or domain rating scores. A score between 30 and 50 is considered average; anything above is considered high, and anything below is considered low. 
• They’re hosted on older domains. In contrast, backlinks on new-ish sites take longer to get indexed.
• They’re hosted on sites that are frequently updated. Search engines give more weight to backlinks hosted on sites that are regularly maintained.
• They’re relevant to the content. Contextually relevant backlinks typically get indexed the fastest.
• They have descriptive anchor texts. That means the anchor texts accurately describe the target page, i.e., the page on which a reader would land if they clicked on it, and contain a relevant keyword.

Follow these guidelines to get your backlinks indexed as fast as possible.

FAQ

How long does it take for backlinks to get indexed?

It can take backlinks anywhere between 4 days and 6 months to get indexed. However, according to some sources, the average waiting period is 10 weeks.

Why is Google not indexing backlinks?

Google and other search engines may not index backlinks for a multitude of reasons. The most common ones include:

• Backlinks are low-quality. This may mean they’re not relevant to the content in which they’re placed or that they’re hosted on low-quality or otherwise spammy websites.
• The hosting web page has crawlability issues. If a URL isn’t crawlable or has crawl errors, Google bots may not be able to discover the backlinks it hosts.
• Backlinks are marked as no-follow. Search engine bots don’t follow or index backlinks with the no-follow attribute. 
• The hosting web page or site is new. In that case, you can expect that search engines will need more time to discover both the hosting URL as well as any backlinks it contains.
• The hosting website has a low domain authority. Search engines may not give much weight to or even index backlinks coming from low-authority sites.

Get High-Quality Backlinks That Get Indexed Fast

Links of higher quality don’t just get indexed faster. They also yield tangible SEO results more quickly as well. 

This has been proven time and time again. As opposed to low-quality links, higher-quality backlinks can start boosting your rankings in as little as four weeks. They’ll also help you move higher up in the SERPs in the long run.

Sounds good? Let our experts build high-quality links for you. Order your backlinks now or schedule a free consultation for custom link building services.