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What is the proper way to index your site with Google Webmaster Tools?

I've recently revamped my website. I basically deleted everything and built everything from scratch.

Here is what I've done:

  • Added a canonical tag on each page so that Google knows which version I prefer (my preferred version is www.mywebsite.com).

  • Set a 301 redirect in htaccess which sends mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com.

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mywebsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

  • Created 301's for legacy urls for the old links of the same domain.

  • Verified www.mywebsite.com with Google Webmaster Tools.

  • Built an xml sitemap which contains the same urls that I've added in the canonical tags and submitted it to GWT.

Its been 7 days now and my sitemap status on GWT is still set to "Pending".

I've only verified the www version of my website...Will that suffice or do I need to verify the non-www version as well? The reason I am asking is that I feel its overkill to verify the non-www version since I already have canonical tags set on each page. Is it normal for Google to take so long? Am I missing anything?

P.S. My site has been around since 2001 but its been almost 8 years since it received a major upgrade (not sure if this plays a role in how fast Google indexes my new pages)

Solution

  • To accelerate the process, verify the non-www site in GWT. Then submit a sitemap with the non-www urls and a recent lastmod date. It will help bots notice your redirects and canonicals faster.

    You will notice the number of indexed urls go down in GWT for non-www and rise for www.

    The age of your site is not correlated with indexing.