How Do I Check If My Site Is In Google?
Just type your website address in the Google search box. If Google knows about your site, it will tell you. If your website doesn’t come up as a result, you need to submit your site to Google. Another way to check if a page is in either of the search engines is to lift a piece of unique text from the page, put it in a search “in quotes”. Your page should come up.
Consider also using the info: operator to see if Google knows about your page – e.g. info:www.timoxendale.co.uk (this also works on bing)
My site does not come up in search engines!
Search engines like Google need to find your website before it can crawl, index it, rate it and display it in it’s listings (SERPS – or Search Engine Results Pages). Googlebot (the spider Google uses) accesses your page if it knows your website exists. This is the reason why your website doesn’t come up in Google search. Google probably doesn’t know about it.
Do I need to pay to get into Google and Bing?
No.
How Do You Submit A Site To Search Engines?
You do not need a seo expert to submit your site to Google, Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo. You don’t pay to get into any of the big search engines natural (free or organic) listings (and note, Bing powers Yahoo results).
As I have said many times in the past, the best way to actually get into Google, and the other top search engines, is for the search engine spider to find your site through a link that is already on another website, which Google already has in its index. A link from a blog, forum or other website will suffice.
What type of link do I need?
Any link from another website will do as long as Google sees it as a link.
When it comes to links, think how relevant the page is you are wanting the link from to your website. Many seo think relevant links are very important in actual rankings…. for me, it’s actually more important just to get a link from a real website. That type of link will help Google trust your site more – and ranking high or even number 1 on Google ultimately comes down to reputation (the quality of websites that link to you). If you submit your website to cheap directories or buy links to get into Google, these links can harm your rankings in the future.
Will directory submission services help me get a website into search engines?
You could of course think about submitting your site to directories like Yahoo or (if you can stand to wait years if you are unlucky) DMOZ. There are some good quality directories out there. A link in ONE OR TWO of these directories will probably get your site into search engines. Unfortunately, there is a LOT of low quality links you will probably stumble upon first, and these kind of links can quickly turn toxic. AVOID all low cost, cheap submission services.
In 2013, the truth is, you hardly even need a link for Google to find your website. Google (especially) WILL find your domain within days or weeks, and if your website has unique content on it – it will go into its index quickly. It will probably rank high for a little while too, then drop down the rankings a bit – this is called the ‘honeymoon period’ by seo who’ve witnessed the phenomenon…. maybe it’s to give you a taste of Google traffic.
Can I register website with Google search engine direct?
Most of the most popular search engines in the world offer ways of submitting your webpages directly to them. I’d expect submitting your site through the following methods will certainly get you started:
- Submit A Site To Google
- Submit My Site To Bing
- Submit RSS feed to Google
- Submit Google Webmaster Tools
- Submit site to Bing Webmaster Tools
Can social media sites get my site indexed by search engines?
Probably. If you do a lot of it. Google certainly spiders Twitter, Facebook (when it can) and Google Plus – and links on these websites often spread to other places – so creating a profile on these websites sometimes works to help a website get into these search engines. I have also hear Bing spiders Facebook pages too (they have an agreement with FB). Social media links are often ‘nofollowed’, though, so they often do not count as a ‘vote’ to your website, so I would not rely on them.
How can I automatically get into Google?
You can ping Google (and other engines) using RSS or XML. If you have a blog, I’ve found registering a site with FEED BURNER is useful in happy, instant indexing of new content on a site. If your website publishes an xml sitemap, this is even better. You can add your website direct to Google Webmaster Tools.
Google Webmaster Tools
At some point, to rank better in search engines, you are going to have to get other sites to link to it, so you may as well think about that first link on external sites. If you want to bypass all that, you can submit your website and verify it in GWT. The procedure is very simple with a little technical knowledge.
Avoid Paid/Free Search Engine Submission Tools and Services
I was talking to someone who recently paid a website submission company to submit their site to lots of different search engines. It’s easy to forget many are ignorant to what seems, to the experienced, an obvious waste of money. I was looking at some free of the free search engine submission tools available and lots are simply lead generation tools to hoodwink you.
You put your website into the tool with your email, and this company has now been alerted you need seo services. If you’re lucky, you’ll only receive the odd unsolicited email. If you’re unlucky, you’ve just been added to a spam list to be forever bombarded with low quality seo services, directory submission services, penguin proof link building strategies and emails telling you about undetectable link networks and the latest traffic exploding wordpress plugin.
Believe me, if you are being told about most of these services in an unsolicited manner – there’s nothing private or undetectable about them. If you do use any of them – point those links at a minisite (and not your main site) because they wont last forever (if at all) and Google is getting serious penalising sites who buy and sell links using these services.
Search engine submission has not been a priority for most seo I mix with because they know the search engines that matter (and are relevant) do a good job of finding a new site by themselves – and there are many documented ways of getting a page into Google, Yahoo and Bing, for instance. You do not need any company to do this for you – for instance, there’s pretty decent documented evidence (and observations made) that Google Plus can be helpful getting your site into Google.
You can submit your site to search engines yourself, for free, any time you want. Your site should be plugged into relevant search engine offerings (like Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Places and Google Plus, for a start).
I don’t ever recall a decent site not being indexed pretty quickly by all the main search engines, and that’s without bothering even with the above services from the engines.
Invest your money instead in building the online reputation of your website and making your pages richer, and more relevant, and seek to keep people on your site, when you get them. Don’t submit your website to sites where you do not know where the link will appear or you are probably in unnatural links territory.
My website is not in Google WEEKS/MONTHS after submitting it
If your website is not in Google (at all) after a few weeks (or months) of doing the above on a few sites (don’t spam), then something might be wrong. You can FETCH THE WEBSITE AS GOOGLE in Google webmaster tools to make sure everything is ok. If Google can access your site, you probably need to review your content and make sure your website complies with Webmaster Guidelines.
