Checked 120 links built for a client over the past year. Ran a site: search and a URL inspection where I could. About 38 of the pages our links are on aren’t indexed at all. Mostly guest posts on smaller blogs that clearly have indexing problems of their own.
As far as I understand, a link on a page Google hasn’t indexed probably passes nothing. So in theory a third of the budget did nothing.
Options I can see:
1. Ignore it, some will get indexed eventually
2. Point a few links at those pages (tier 2 style) to get them crawled
3. Ask the site owner to add an internal link to the post from their homepage or a category
4. Make “indexed within 30 days” a condition before accepting a placement
Option 3 has worked a couple of times and is basically free. What do the rest of you do? Is anyone checking index status of their placements as standard now?
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