SEO is huge when it comes to getting traffic on your website. Out-of-the-box, Universe has some amazing SEO tools that you should be taking advantage of (such as site title and description as well as titles and descriptions for each of the pages on your website) to get the most traffic to your site. Having a custom domain on your site not only solidifies your brand on the internet, but also makes SEO crawling a little easier for robots.
Note: a custom domain is required for this to work
If you're already setup with a custom domain on your site, there is a way to have Google index your site at an expedited rate as well as give them your sitemap so they always know which pages should appear in search results. To do this, you'll need to have the Universe app downloaded (so you can add a DNS record) as well as access to the Google Search Console using your preferred Google account. You can access the console here.
Once you're in the console:
You're going to need to verify that you own your domain before you're able to request indexing across your site.
Enter your domain into the Domain option (the left one) so that all subdomains can be indexed improving your reach on Google. Once you've entered your domain, you're going to be presented with a TXT DNS record to add.
Copy this TXT record and add it to your domain's DNS records. If your domain was registered through Universe, head over to the Settings tab in the app for your site. From there, tap on Domain and then DNS Records. Now, you're all set to create the TXT record. For the Host Name, enter "@" and paste the TXT record you copied into the Data field. It should look like this:
Once added, tap the blue check in the top right to save! Your TXT record has officially been added to verify domain ownership and you'll need to head back over to the Google Search Console. Click the VERIFY button from the same dialog when you copied the TXT from earlier. If it's not there or already closed, Google will periodically check your domain to see if the record has been added. If it verifies correctly, you have full domain management access from the Google Search Console!
Adding your sitemap:
Adding your sitemap to the Google Search Console gives the Google indexing robots a solid list of places to check your site for content since it includes all of the pages you've created. Your sitemap can be accessed at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. So with our example testingadomain.de domain, the sitemap is found at testingadomain.de/sitemap.xml.
You'll need to click the Sitemaps tab under Indexing in the console to add this URL. Once you've added it, clicked Submit!
That's it! Google will now index your sitemap and all of the pages on your site! Although this may take some time and is not instant, it'll give Google some starting info on what should appear in search results.
Requesting indexing on individual pages
Sometimes you may want to request indexing on a page that Google did not learn about yet or may have skipped over in previous indexing crawls. To do this, type the URL in the top bar that says "Inspect any URL in...". Once you've entered a URL, you'll be taken to the details page of the URL. This page will provide insight on why Google may not have indexed it and provides you with the option to request indexing.
To request indexing, click the REQUEST INDEXING button. While there is no guarantee the URL will be indexed, this button does add it to the indexing queue. It usually takes a few hours from clicking the button for the page to appear in Google search results.
Overall, the Google Search Console is a great place to provide Google with everything it needs to know to effectively index the content on your website. It is also very useful to see why pages were skipped in indexing, where traffic is coming from and other important information such as ranking in results. Hope this helps!
