How to submit your website to search engines

Why you should submit your website to search engines

Websites take time to show up in search results after deployment, but how can you speed up the process. The best way to submit your website is to use the search engines tools directly.

Google has more than 90% of the market share, whereas Bing and Yahoo make a combined market share of about 4% according to this article. Search engines algorithms in place to rank your website, they crawl the web in order to find new websites or new changes in an existing website through links on other websites.

 

Once you make a new website and publish it, instead of waiting for your website to be found on the world wide web, give crawlers a nudge in the right direction. Google and Bing have developed tools to “submit” your website, so they can directly go and crawl your website. Submitting your website also has some extra perks: you can provide extra details about your website. Use their insights tools to improve your website.

Submit your website to Google Search Console

Google’s goal is to organise the world’s information and to make it accessible and useful. It’s no wonder Google spends a large amount of time tweaking and making algorithms to optimise search results. Google search console was created to help website owners get their websites easily indexed and ranked.

This tool is completely free and available to everyone, making it a no brainer to make use of it.

Step 1. Sign in or Create an Account

 

Step 2. Add your website URL and click continue

 

Step 3. Downloading the file provided and uploading it to your website.

 

Step 4. Click verify and let Google crawl your website

 

 

 

Once your website is indexed, you can use other free tools included viewing any errors or problems that Google has found. This is a great opportunity to find anything that you might have missed. These tools will help you gain a better understanding of website indexing, and be able to tell search engines about updates.

Submit your website to Bing Webmaster tools

Although Google holds the majority market share, using bing to submit your website can also be useful. By Submitting your website to Bing, it will also show up on Yahoo is powered by Bing’s index.

Step 1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools using the available sign-in options

 

Step 2. Add your website. Bing offers two options, adding your site manually using your site URL or importing your site from Google Search Console.

 

Step 3. Enjoy your website indexed.

Check your site indexed status

Google and Bing both have an internal tool where you can check your websites index status, this will require you to have an account. A third party google index checker that does not require an account is Linkody.

Fix Crawl Issues

Sometimes there can be some crawl issues on your website. If you notice that a specific page has not been indexed, use the URL inspect tools provided (Google or Bing) to find out why. If your entire website is not indexing, check the search engine visibility setting. This can be found by going to the WordPress Dashboard » Settings » Reading » Untick the Search Engine Visibility option.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, submitting your website can not only speed up the crawling process but give you insights into your website. Instead of waiting for your website could be discovered on its own, it is better to be proactive and initiate this process. Most importantly by submitting your website directly to Google or Bing can also highlight search problems such as non-indexable pages. There’s no reason to not submit your website, it offers you an insight into crawling and gives search engines a better understanding of your website.

 

Until next time, keep your website indexed and crawlable

Dorin