How to help Google find and index your new website

In my post, I am going to show you what you need to do to help Google find and index your website.

Google searches the web for new website content every second of every day and will find your site eventually. I show you how to speed up that search process.

When I first started blogging, I was worried that Google and Bing would not find my website. Then I found out how to submit websites to Google for indexing.

Let’s get started.

How does Google find and index new websites?

Google has ‘bots’ that constantly scan the web looking for new content. Once new content is found, the data is sent back to Google, they analyze the content and decide what where it should appear in search results.

How to submit your site to Google using Google Search Console

If you haven’t signed up for a Google search console account yet, you can do that at https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Once you have signed up and verified ownership of your site, your account dashboard looks like this.

Submit a new website to Google Search Console

To submit new websites or posts, the process is the same. Copy the website or post URL and paste it into the ‘inspect any URL’ box at the top of the overview page. I will use a new post on one of my websites to show you.

I want Google to index this new post.

After publishing the post, I view the post in a website browser and copy the URL.

You can see from this next image, I have highlighted the URL in the address bar.

Next, I go to my Google Search Console overview.

Now I paste the highlighted URL into the ‘inspect any URL’ box at the top of this screen. Like this.

After pasting the URL, press enter. Then you get this popup.

After a few seconds, the screen will go to this.

The green tick is Google stating it has indexed this URL already. If Google has not indexed your URL, it will be grey.

On the large box with the green tick, there is a question on the bottom right-hand side. Google is asking you if your page has changed. If it has or is new select the ‘Request indexing’ link.

Once you click on the request indexing link you get this popup.

Google will run a quick live test to make sure this URL can be indexed. Once the test is complete, you see this popup.

Google has accepted your request to index this webpage. Google also explains that doing this multiple times for the same page will not make Google work any faster.

Request indexing once

You only need request indexing once. Google will add your URL to its crawl list. To get rid of this popup click on ‘GOT IT’.

How to check if your website has been indexed

If you have a brand new website and are eager to know if your site has been indexed by Google. This is how you check.

First, open a new browser tab and then type ‘site:(site URL)’ into the Google search engine.

Here is an example. You replace (site URL) with the URL you want to check.

When your website or post has been indexed, it will show in the search results. If it hasn’t been indexed then the search results page looks like this.

If you are sure you have entered the URL into Google correctly, wait another day before checking again. Most of the time when I index a new post it is indexed within the hour.

How to index your website video tutorial

Conclusion

With my detailed guide, you now know how to help Google find and index your new website and posts.

I suggest you request indexing for new or updated posts, it speeds up the indexing process. In addition to submitting URLs, you should submit a sitemap to Google and Bing. If you don’t have a sitemap yet, check out my ‘how to create a sitemap‘ blog post.

Before you leave to submit your new website to Google, may I request you leave a comment? Did I help you with my post? What would you like me to do a tutorial on next? Do you have any questions? I look forward to reading your feedback.

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