If you want all of your network to show up in search engines, it needs to be entirely public. This means that every page on your Ning Network — not just the main page — needs to be accessible to visitors. Google and other search engines won’t be able to crawl your Ning Network if it is private. Privacy is an absolute necessity for some Ning Creators, but if you want to be found, you’ll want to choose the public route.
If you’re just getting started and want to check that your public Ning Network is appearing in search, it should happen automatically within a few days of creating your Ning Network. But if you’d like to speed up the process you can Verify Your Network with Google Webmaster Tools.
Keeping your SEO up
Ning is well optimized for SEO (search engine optimization), but you can go further to improve your search engine ranking. First, take a minute to fill out the basic keywords you want Google to associate your site with. You can do this from the Settings > Network Details section of your dashboard. Not sure how this works? We have an article to help you Choose the Right Keywords for SEO.
Second strategy for better SEO: Use tags whenever possible. You can tag individual blogs, forum discussions, photos, events — you’ll see the option to tag content in a lot of places. Include a few words that accurately describe the content on the page, and separate them with commas. The content on the page is more important than the tags you use, so don’t expect to get awesome results with not-so-awesome content. But, in general, tags can help your content get found.
Advanced options for pages
If you have specific HTML content you’ve created that you really want to focus on with your SEO efforts, the Pages feature has Advanced Page Customization options. If all of that sounds too complicated, don’t sweat it. The best SEO comes from having great content and not from tinkering with all of the technical details.
Remove specific pages from Google
Maybe you want all the SEO benefits a public site provides but have a few specific pages you don’t want to be found. You can prevent search engines from indexing those URLs by editing your robots.txt file. Head to the Tools > Search Bots section of your dashboard. You can manually edit the robots.txt file directly from this page and enter the URLs of pages you want to hide from Google and other search engines. When you’ve finished making edits, be sure to click the “Save” button! Keep in mind that it may take some time for search engines to reindex your entire site after you make these changes.
Opt out of Google entirely
Maybe you want to completely Prevent Google From Indexing Your Site. If that’s the case, simply make your site private, and Google definitely won’t index any part of your site.
Create or link to resources as a content strategy
You may already have a bunch of great content you’re itching to add to your site. Research articles, white papers, studies, stories, and slideshows are all great resources that can be introduced as pages, uploaded as attachments, or added using the File Manager. Incorporating previously published materials like this can improve your search engine rankings and helps shape member interaction and discussion. But, also consider linking out to related information like partner websites and your social-media presence (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). This will add greater depth to the site and make it more valuable to passers-by.
One of the cleanest and most straightforward examples we’ve seen using standalone pages to list resources is done by FabLab@School, a site that serves as a meeting place for students who want to learn to make stuff — including designing their own products. They use HTML pages to list both on-site and outside resources. Straightforward, simple, and well-designed (which you’d expect from a bunch of creative makers!)