Getting indexed by Google is easy, but takes time
Why is my new site not found in Google / Other Search Engines?
This is a question I hear quite often from clients who may not be especially tech savvy, Web savvy, or whatnot, and it deserves some attention for that reason (future clients may even be reading this so that I don’t have to type it all out in an email). So take what you can from this article, and feel free to leave comments and add more if you think I have forgotten some key points. (If needed I can devote a future blog entry to your comments/questions.)
Your site is down? No, it isn’t.
Before we go any further, I should mention that typing your web address (URL) into the search bar is not the same thing as typing it into the address bar. Just because nothing comes up on Google / Yahoo / Live Search, doesn’t mean the site is offline! Your site is still public, it just is not available yet through the search engines. It will be soon, so in the mean time, type the URL in the address bar…you’ll see your site. And as long as your friends/customers know your domain name, they won’t need to use a search engine, just have them type out the address manually. Keep reading though, and we’ll talk about how we will get your site more visible…
So, when you type in your new (or newly redesigned) web address in a Google search field and hit enter, why do you not see your site listed? After all, it’s been public for a whole day!
Well, the simple answer is, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just throw up a web page (or site) and immediately expect to be listed in the search engines, especially not on the first page! This could take anywhere from a day to a few months, depending on many factors. Please be patient with your web designer, as this is not under his/her control, and like with many other things, patience is a virtue. That said, there are some ways to speed things up, if you need to get indexed as soon as possible (although 99% of my clients always want everything done as soon as possible)…
One good way to get indexed within 24 hours is to open a Google Pages account, and put some content up on your free Google site. You can bet your bottom dollar it will be indexed almost right away. Now, all you have to do is link to your other content from that Google page… Boom! Headshot. Your other site(s) is now crawled and you are listed (although probably not very high yet) in the index. So you are indexed…now how do you find yourself? The easiest way is probably to search for your domain name! So for example, if I want to find webovator.com, I search for webovator.com. Sounds pretty simple, but not impressive. It’s okay though, we are making some progress, because we know that we ARE listed, just not for which keywords. Now we need to figure out how we want people to find us, and use those phrases as our keywords.
