Helping Google Find Your Website

A big part of SEO is helping Google find your website.

Helping Google find your website isn't difficult. It doesn't require a big budget and it doesn't require high level tech skills.

It's just a case of getting the basics right. In today's article, we'll tell you everything you need to know about this aspect of search engine optimisation.

How Google Finds Websites

Google uses automated software called "crawlers" to look for new or updated web pages. The crawlers work by following links on your site (or other sites) to learn how your website is structured.

Once the crawler has visited your page, Google adds it to its "index". This is a huge list of every page on the internet (that Google knows about).

Finally, Google "ranks" all the pages in order. This order then determines which pages appear in the top (and 2nd, and 3rd...) position on the results page. Google uses a very complicated (and secret!) algorithm to determine the rankings.

Is My Website On Google?

It's very easy to check if you are on Google. Just do what's called a "site search". Type in "site:" and then the name of your website. So for KBM we'd type "site:keybusinessmarketing.co.uk".

If you see results, you're on Google. If you're not coming up, the Google help page suggests the following reasons:

1. You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet
2. The site isn't well connected from other sites on the web
3. The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively
4. Google received an error when trying to crawl your site
5. Your policy blocks Google from crawling the site

If it's problem #1, you just need to wait a few days. Most of the other ones can be fixed, but you might need to work with a web designer or SEO expert.

How Do I Get My Website On Google?

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you need to:

• Pay to get on Google
• Submit your site

Getting listed on Google is free and will happen automatically. Having said that, there are a few tricks that make it easier for the Google crawlers to find you:

• Create and submit a site map
• Make sure your site hierarchy and internal links are well organised
• Tell Google which pages should and shouldn't be crawled (via robots.txt)
• Create descriptive SEO snippets to help Google understand what you do
• Use formatting and headers to emphasise key points
• Make sure page URLs and descriptive and not generic

Even if you don't do these things, Google will find you eventually. But considering SEO is such an important part of content marketing, why take the chance"!

Key Takeaways

• Google will find your site automatically - no need to pay or "submit"
• There are technical fixes to consider if you're not showing up on Google
• Creating a site map is an easy way to help Google find you
• Making things clear and easy for human readers is rewarded by Google

If you'd like to discuss how we help websites like yours improve their search engine position, please get in touch.