Does any of this this sound familiar?
- I just launched a new website yesterday and my website doesn’t show up when you search on Google! What the heck did my web developer do (or not do)?
- My site has been online for 2 weeks and I still can’t find it in a search. Is this normal?
- I can only find a couple of my webpages in a Google search. How long until my entire website is indexed?
There is no quick and easy answer to any of these questions.
In fact, it is important to note that websites are not automatically added to Googles search results and there is no guarantee that any site will be indexed and included by. Google uses a complex algorithm to determine what sites and pages to index and include in their search results. That means that same algorithm is excluding websites from their search results.
However, unless your website is making use of black hat SEO or violating other Google best practices, your website should eventually be indexed with no issues.
Unfortunately, there is no fixed time period for your site to be included in Google’s search results. Typically, it can take anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks (or more) to be indexed.
What can you do to help speed up your inclusion in Google’s search results?
- Create a XML site map and submit it to Google through Google’s Webmaster Tools. This will make it easy for Google to find and crawl all your website pages.
- Make sure that every page is reachable through a text link. This can be part of your site navigation or inline text links.
- Make sure your social media profiles link to your website and be sure to use your social media accounts to post links to your site or specific pages on your site.
- Think about what words your site visitors might use to when searching for your website and make sure those words are used in your site content.
- Make sure your <title> elements and image alt text are relevant and accurate.
- Get some quality inbound links to your site. Inbound links are links from other websites or social media sources. Make sure these links are coming from relevant websites. Caution – Links from non-relevant or spam sites will actually hurt your website’s search results.
- Make sure your website is free from broken links, programming errors and bloated code.
Of course, even once your website is indexed, it doesn’t mean that your site will be performing well in google Searches. Being indexed means that Google has found and crawled your site and has added you to their search results, but it doesn’t mean that your site is on page one for those results.
Getting to page one will involve more strategic SEO planning and optimization and is a topic for another day.
If you are struggling getting your website indexed or want to perform better in the search engines, feel free to contact me, to discuss your situation.
