Learn how search indexing works, learning the basics of the process of getting your content seen, indexed, and ranked entails.
If you have a brand-new website and you’ve tried to see if it shows up in search results, you might be disappointed – it’s probably either buried beneath pages and pages of other results, or it might not appear at all!
If you just created or updated your blog or website, you need to make sure you submit it to search engines.
A fundamental SEO (search engine optimization) tactic is submitting your website to search engines.
Submitting your website’s URL helps ensure that your site is indexed properly and visible in search results, which is important for SEO.
In this article, we’ll provide a clear and concise guide on how to submit your website to search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo.
We’ll also offer some tips and answer common questions that you might have about the process.
Why Should I Submit My Website to Search Engines?
Search engines can take some time to discover your site, especially in the early stage when the traffic is still slow, and visitors are rare. This
This is because search engines mostly use “crawlers” to find and index new websites – these bots go around the internet, detect new URLs and visit them to find out if there’s a real page on the other end.
The process can take weeks or more and, if you’re an owner of a new site, likely, you don’t care to wait that long.
To ensure that your site is properly indexed by search engines, you will want to submit your website’s URL and sitemaps.
Although some search engines will eventually find and index your website on their own through the use of web crawlers, directly submitting your site will speed up the process and get your site indexed much faster so you can focus on improving your SEO.
Are you curious about how SEO works? Check out our in-depth explanation for beginners.
How Do I Check If My Site or Page Is on Google?
The easiest way to make sure your website is indexed by Google is to enter your URL into the Google search bar.
If your website is indexed, then your site should appear somewhere in the results (but your SEO will affect where it appears).
You can also use the search operator command, “site:” before your domain name to see if your site has been indexed by Google.
You can also try this out on the other search engines to make sure your site shows up on all of them.
Should I Use a Website Submission Service?
While website submission services do exist and can be used, it is generally advised against unless you are okay with spending extra money needlessly.
The process of submitting your site manually is free of charge and only requires a few minutes of your time.
So there is no real benefit to using a website submission service over doing it yourself.
What You’ll Need to Get Started
To submit your website to search engines, make sure you have:
- Access to your website and pages
- Access to Google Search Console
- Access to Bing Webmaster Tools
If you aren’t already up and running with the above tools, we’ll give a quick overview of how to get started.
How Long Does Indexing a Site Take?
Your site’s journey to being indexed by a search engine starts when you submit your URL for indexing. Once you do that, your site is added to a queue to be crawled.
How long it takes to be crawled and indexed can vary, but it’s usually only a matter of minutes or days. Generally, indexing doesn’t take too long, and you can set it up so that you’re notified when it’s finished.
Be Proactive
While many online tools and resources are automated and you could expect them to do most of the work, it’s always better to take matters into your own hands.
Now that you’ve learned the very straightforward methods to submit your site to search engines, go on and make the most of the powerful tools at your disposal.