Not matter how many times I talk about it to clients or speak about it in workshops, I still get the same question.
"I am trying to work out how the google thing works – been typing in my domain name and related search terms and my site’s not coming up at all, has that stuff we talked about which brings my page up first, does that not work till we sign off the on the website, maybe till it’s finished construction? Just checking!"
The adage if you build it they will come is simply not true with Google or any search engines or really any business. You have to let people know about your business. If you build a business on a busy road and do nothing else to advertise you are praying that the flow of traffic past your business will cause people to come in. The same is true on the web. If you build your business and place it on a busy road (aka popular/busy website) then people will come. If you build your business off in the countryside down a long drive way with no signage at the end of the driveway and no indication that anything exists at the end of the driveway, how much business are you expecting to get?
Here are some SIMPLE strategies to get you listed with Google. Please note, if you struggle or if you simply can’t be bothered to do it we can do it for you and for us it would really only take a couple hours to get you started and indexed. Also note, trying to get listed at the top for particular search terms involves a bit more strategy discussed in other workshops and lessons which is also something we can do for you for on a monthly SEO program.
There are lots of things you will need to do to get your website listed with Google.
First, we have to tell Google you are here.
- You can easily do that by creating a google webmaster account (which is free) and then you can submit your site to them.
- You can also then put your physical business/presence on google maps.
- We also need to find a couple sites to link in to you. Google doesn’t like websites that are "islands". We need to get some links pointing to the site from elsewhere on the internet and we need to try to get inbound links from sites that have high page rank (meaning Google values them already ~ sites with page rank 5+ are great)
- You could also create a free google adWords account and you could purchase keywords to direct people to your site. That way google immediately knows the site exists AND you get immediate status in search results.
Simply by building the site the robots won’t come to it unless you tell them to. You can tell them by any of the above mentioned options. I would do all of them. I can do that for you too if you like.
Then, once the robots come to the site they read the content and rate/value it.
Don’t expect to be in search results for a while. It can take a couple months even but if you employ these strategies we have had sites get indexed and listed in less than 5 days.
Webmaster Tools Account:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
Submit Your Site To Google and Have them CRAWL it:
www.google.com/addurl.html
To See IF Your Site is Indexed:
– Go to Google and in the url bar enter: site:yourdomain.com
You will see the pages that are indexed there.