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Automate Google Indexing for Your Gatsby Website

In this blog post we will look into how to automate Google indexing for your Gatsby website using AutoIndex. First, we will cover the steps you need to take in order to setup sitemaps and prepare your Gatsby site and then we’ll show how you can connect them to AutoIndex and start improving your Google search visibility.

Enhance the visibility of your Gatsby website on Google by implementing automatic indexing for every page. This is essential for websites like blogs, portfolios, e-commerce stores, and business sites that aim to appear in pertinent search results. AutoIndex provides a straightforward and efficient method to ensure all pages are indexed quickly and checks regularly for new content. By letting AutoIndex manage the indexing, you can dedicate more time to crafting engaging content for your visitors.

We can break up everything you need to do in just 4 steps: adding sitemaps, connecting you website to Google Search Console is you didn’t already and importing your website to AutoIndex. Let’s look into all these steps one-by-one.

Step 1: Generate a Sitemap for Your Gatsby Site

To generate an XML sitemap, you will use the gatsby-plugin-sitemap package. It’s easy to get started:

1. First, install gatsby-plugin-sitemap package:

yarn add gatsby-plugin-sitemap

or

npm install gatsby-plugin-sitemap

or

pnpm add gatsby-plugin-sitemap

2. Once installation is complete, you can now add this plugin to your gatsby-config.js, like so (Note: The siteUrl property must be defined and not left empty.):

module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    siteUrl: `https://www.example.com`,
  },
  plugins: [`gatsby-plugin-sitemap`],
};

Next run a build (npm run build) since the sitemap generation will only happen for production builds. This is all that’s required to get a working sitemap with Gatsby! By default, the generated sitemap path is /sitemap-index.xml and will hold an index of sitemap chunks, but the plugin exposes options to configure this default functionality.

You can read more in Gatsby Official Documentation.

Step 2: Connect Your Website to Google Search Console

This is a straightforward process, but you might need to verify your website ownership if you haven’t already:

1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. Click the Add Property button and enter your website URL.
3. Choose a verification method (HTML file upload, HTML tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or domain name provider).
4. Follow the instructions to verify your website.
5. Once verified, you can access your website’s performance data, index status, and other valuable insights.
6. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console by navigating to the Sitemaps section and entering the URL of your sitemap.

Step 3: Connect Your Website to AutoIndex

Once your website is verified in Google Search Console and your sitemap is submitted, you can connect your website to AutoIndex. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to AutoIndex at dash.autoindex.app with your Google Account and grant permissions to import Google Search Console websites.
2. AutoIndex will sync your websites from Google Search Console (GSC) and you will see all your properties in the dashboard.
3. Locate your new website in the list of GSC properties.
4. Add your special service account as an “Owner” in Google Search Console. This is required for AutoIndex to request indexing on your behalf.
5. Enable indexing by clicking “Enable” button.
6. That’s it! Now AutIndex will sync all the pages, check their status in Search Console and will send all un-indexed pages to Google.

With auto indexing activated, AutoIndex will regularly check your sitemap daily for unindexed pages and initiate the indexing process. You’ll receive email notifications whenever new pages are successfully indexed.

By following these steps and leveraging AutoIndex, you can ensure your WordPress website’s pages are swiftly indexed by Google, increasing visibility and driving relevant traffic to your site.