VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is no longer a term that people don’t quite understand. As a matter of fact, many people have started using a VPN on a regular basis. A VPN can be used for different purposes. For example, some people use VPN to increase online security; Some people use VPN to bypass content blocking; Some people use VPN to stay anonymous online. For online marketers or SEO professionals, VPN can be used for additional purposes.

To help you better understand why VPN can help with your online marketing or SEO projects, let me first point out the concept of geo-targeting. Let’s say you are visiting Google from the United States and you search for a term, the results Google shows you might be different if you do the same search in another country, for example, Singapore. Also, if you visit Netflix from the UK, the contents you see will be different from what you see if you are in the United States. This is what has been called as geo-targeting.

How geo-targeting works? Well, each computer connected to the Internet has an IP address, which can not long identify this computer but can also reveal location of this computer. When you visit a website, your IP address will be shown to that site. Based on your IP address, that website can figure out your location, and then if can show contents that target your current location.

Geo-targeting not only works for websites, but also for advertising. For example, querying Google with the same keyword might result in different ads showing up when the search was initiated from different countries. If you have used Adwords before, you must be familiar with the Adwords setting where you can specify to which countries your ads should be showing.

For online marketers and SEO professionals, one problem we are facing is to efficiently take geo-targeting into consideration when doing our efforts. For example, if you are working from your office in New York, how do you know whether your ads show up correctly to people visiting Google or your target websites from Atlanta?

Well, to solve this problem, you can use a VPN to help. On benefit of using a VPN is that you can appears to be on a different IP address when you connect to the Internet. Most VPN providers offer VPN servers in different locations. Many of them have servers in hundreds of places around the globe. You can connect to a VPN server in your targeted location to get an IP address for that location. As a result, when you go online, you will see what Internet users in that location normally see.

How to find a VPN service to help your online marketing and SEO? Well, there are many VPN provider available these days. Different VPN services might focus on different purposes. For example, there are VPNs that are optimized for China to bypass blocking. There are VPNs that are good for torrenting and P2P file sharing. To find the best VPNs that will meet your needs, you should consider the following factors:

Server locations. This could be the most important thing that you consider. Make sure the VPN provider covers a good range of locations that include the locations that you are interested in targeting.

VPN Prices. Most VPN services offer reasonable prices and it's not difficult to find some VPNs that are really cheap. The normal price range is between $2 to $10 per month. Also, many providers offer free trials, which allows you to test their services without spending a penny.

Multi-logins. One VPN feature that can be easily ignored is the restriction on multi-logins, or simultaneous connections. With a VPN account, usually you can only connect to it at the same time from a limited number of devices. Some VPN services limit this number to 2, while others allows up to 5. If you need to connect to VPN from multiple devices at the same time, make sure you know what this limit is from your potential VPN provider.

Once you have signed up for a VPN service, you can use it to bypass geo-targeting and see what people in other locations will see. On top of that, you can also enjoy better online security. Therefore, you should definitely give VPN a try!

One challenge for many webmasters and SEO specialists is to get a newly created page (such as a new blog post) indexed by Google as fast as possible. We want fast Google indexing because we hope to get organic traffic from Google as fast as possible. However, often times you have to wait quite a long time to see your new page indexed by Google. It could be a few days or even a few weeks. Is there a faster way to get a new page indexed by Google?

The answer is yes. Let me show you how I get newly created web pages indexed by Google within 1 minute.

You Need to Add the Website to Your Google Webmaster Account

To use this technique, first of all, you need to have a Google Webmaster account. If you don’t have one yet, you can sign up from here. Once you’ve registered a Google Webmaster account, you need to sign in to Search Console and then click on the “Add A Property” button to add your website to the Search Console. This step requires some verification but let me skip the details here.

It’s a Good Practice to Submit a Sitemap to Google

Once you’ve added your website to the Google Search Console, a good practice is to submit the site’s sitemap to Google. Here’s where to submit a sitemap in the search console:

Once you’re in the Sitemaps section, just click on the “Add/Test Sitemap” button on the upper right corner and tell Google where your sitemap is located. Using sitemap can help you get newly created pages indexed by Google faster and automatically. However, this is NOT the real trick I’m talking about.

Use the Fetch as Google Tool to Add a New Page

Now here’s the real trick. In the Google Search Console, under “Crawl”, there’s a link titled “Fetch as Google” (see image below). That’s the magic tool to get your new page indexed by Google super-fast.

Once you’ve clicked the “Fetch as Google” link under the “Crawl” section, you will see a form where you are asked to fill in a URL. Just paste the URL of your newly created page there and click on the “Fetch” button to its right.

After that, you will see the new path you just entered shows up below. Along with the path, you will see a “Submit to index” button. That’s the magic button to get our newly created page indexed by Google within 1 minute (see image below). Now click on that button.

After you have clicked the “Submit to index” button, you will see a popup window, asking you whether to craw only this URL or crawl this URL and its direct links. I’d suggest you go with “Crawl only this URL” for two reasons: 1) You’re most likely only interested in getting this link indexed at this moment. 2) Google has a monthly limit of 10 submissions for the second choice, while the quota for the first choice (crawl only this URL) is 500, which is a much bigger number. After you’ve made the choice, just click the “Go” button (see image below):

At this point, Google will start indexing your new page! You can then test whether this new page has been indexed by Google by pasting the full URL into Google’s search box. If the new page shows up as the first result, then it’s done!

Based on my experience, I were able to get newly created pages indexed by Google within a few seconds (yes, seconds) after using the the “Fetch as Google” tool. Since my experience with this technique has been limited to my own site, I can’t guarantee everybody will see the same result as fast as I got. However, I think it’s still worth knowing about this trick. Using this method is definitely better than just waiting for Google to pick up the new page.

Not only can you use this trick to add new pages to Google, you can only use it to update existing pages. For example, you might have done some tweaking on a page and you want the changes indexed by Google as soon as possible, you can use this trick as well. Just feed the URL of this page to the “Fetch as Google” tool and let Google index the newly updated content!