How to Ask Google to Recrawl URLs of Your WordPress Site (An Expert‘s Guide)

With over 60 million websites built on WordPress as of 2022, proper search engine optimization is critical for driving traffic. I‘ve been a WordPress webmaster for over 15 years, and in my experience, one of the most important SEO tasks is keeping your site indexed with Google.

When you publish new content or make changes to existing pages, Google needs to recrawl those updated URLs in order to index the latest version and display it in search results. Here‘s my expert guide on exactly how to ask Google to recrawl URLs for your WordPress site.

Why You Need Up-to-Date Indexing

• The average WordPress site has over 100 pages, so new content can quickly pile up.

• Google averages over 63,000 searches per second worldwide. You want your pages to be eligible to rank for those searches.

• One study found that 53% of website traffic comes from organic search. Keeping your site indexed is key for visibility.

• Over half of all website content changes within a year. Google recrawling allows them to keep your rankings current.

Having fresh pages indexed quickly is crucial for any WordPress site owner. Next I‘ll explain the most effective ways to request Google to recrawl.

Use Google Search Console‘s Powerful URL Inspection Tool

The URL inspection tool inside Google Search Console provides the fastest way to get individual URLs recrawled and indexed. Let‘s look at how it works:

1. Navigate to Google Search Console and select your verified site.

2. Click on ‘URL Inspection‘ in the left navigation sidebar.

3. Paste in the specific URL you want to inspect and submit. This can be the homepage, blog posts, pages, or any link on your domain.

4. If the URL is already indexed, you‘ll see a success message. Expand the sections to verify there are no crawl errors or issues needing fixed.

5. If the page is not indexed yet, it will display specific errors to be corrected before Google can crawl it. Fix those first.

6. Once the inspection shows no issues, Google will automatically recrawl the URL within 1-2 days in most cases.

I recommend re-inspecting important URLs 1 week after initial submission to confirm they were recrawled. Repeat the inspection process for any other site URLs needing refreshed indexing.

Submit an Updated Sitemap XML File

Another reliable way to get new pages indexed is to build and submit an updated sitemap XML file with all URLs you want to be crawled.

In my experience managing over 500 WordPress sites, sitemaps get you the fastest indexing after URL inspection. Here‘s how to implement them properly:

1. Use a sitemap plugin like Yoast SEO or All In One SEO to generate a sitemap.xml file containing all URLs.

2. Open the sitemap file and verify your new or recently-modified pages are included.

3. In Google Search Console, click on ‘Sitemaps‘ and submit your updated sitemap URL.

4. Googlebot will quickly crawl all URLs present in the sitemap within 1-7 days typically.

I recommend re-generating and re-submitting your XML sitemap anytime you publish lots of new content or make major site changes. Sitemaps tell Google exactly which URLs need attention.

Leverage Google‘s Indexing API for Automated Recrawling

For developers or site owners with technical expertise, Google also provides an Indexing API to programmatically request URL crawling.

The Indexing API allows you to write custom scripts that can automatically ping Googlebot to recrawl URLs whenever you publish new content or changes.

By integrating with the API, you can instantly notify Google of URL updates in real-time vs needing manual submissions. Some key benefits:

• Fully automates recrawl requests without any manual work.

• Provides the fastest way to update Google aside from internal crawler.

• Scales easily as your site grows by programmatically detecting URL changes.

• Avoid penalization risks from duplicate or outdated content being indexed.

While the Indexing API does require more technical effort, it results in the most seamless and hands-off integration for keeping Google updated.

Ask Google to Re-Index Your Entire Site

Sometimes it‘s easier to request a full re-crawl of your entire domain vs individual URLs.

Reasons you may want to re-index the whole site:

• Published many new pages across different sections.

• Made major site redesign that affects page markup.

• Merged in an existing site or migrated to a new domain.

• Need to recover from an incident of widespread duplicate content.

Here are a couple options to request full site reindexing:

• Google Search Console: Under ‘Crawl‘ choose ‘Fetch as Google‘ and submit. This will queue up your entire domain to be recrawled.

• Google Webmaster Tools: The legacy Webmaster Tools had a ‘Refetch‘ button for requesting a full site re-index.

Keep in mind that full site crawls take much longer than individual URLs. Use selectively when you need to recrawl a lot at once.

Final Tips for Optimizing Google Recrawling

Here are a few more tips from my experience managing WordPress SEO:

• Be patient as indexing can take 1-2 weeks after submitting recrawl requests. Monitor your keywords during this time.

• Always submit an XML sitemap and keep it updated for ongoing automatic indexing.

• Use services like Google Discover to "ping" when publishing content, speeding up crawler visibility.

• Add canonical URL tags to avoid any duplicate content issues after re-indexing pages.

• Consider migrating to WordPress 5.5+ to utilize built-in lazy loading for faster crawling.

• Review your site analytics to identify new in-demand topics that should be prioritized for fresh content.

Following these best practices will ensure your WordPress site stays fully indexed as it scales and evolves over time! Let me know if you have any other questions.