Submitting your website to search engines allows Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others to crawl your page and index it, thus ranking it on their SERPs. Without this simple step, your site will exist but won’t be accessible until indexed unless directly searched for and will not rank.
Simply put, search engines take some time to understand, organize, and index the site’s content, so to accelerate that process, it’s a good idea to submit your website. Our experts further elaborate on why it’s important to submit a website to a search engine, how you can do it, and how to check whether your website submissions are completed.
Why Submit a Website to Search Engines?
The main reason why you should submit your website to search engines is to help it get discovered more quickly. Currently, there are over one billion sites, with thousands going live daily. Hence, the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) have little idea when a new website is launched.
This is because search engines like Google do not rely on manual submissions, instead, their primary way of discovering new websites and pages is through crawling. In this process, crawlers search the Internet and review everything they see, using links to move between the pages and sites to locate new links and content. Whenever there is valuable content, it gets indexed.
Many leave it up to search engines to locate and discover their content. However, this can take months if the website has few inbound links. That’s why, to get listed quickly, site owners must submit a sitemap. Submitting your website to search engines helps fast-track this process and ensures crawlers can find your new site or the changes you’ve made.
Another reason to submit to your site is that it drives more traffic. Being indexed and shown in search results increases your online visibility, allowing your business to get noticed and people to learn about your services. Additionally, website submission to Google and Bing gives you access to free tools that can help improve your site.
How To Submit a Website to a Search Engine?
Submitting your website to a search engine involves three basic steps and a few sub-steps. Those are as follows:
Step 1: Creating an XML Sitemap
The first step is always a sitemap. Sitemaps give search engines an easy-to-crawl blueprint that outlines the structure and content of the web pages. The common types of sitemaps are:
- HTML sitemaps
- XML sitemaps
XML sitemaps are usually more recommended by SEO experts. Generating an XML sitemap can be done in three ways:
- CMS-generated sitemap: All CMS (WordPress, Wix, etc.) generate a sitemap the second you start adding your content. This method is the most recommended one.
- Manually generated sitemap: This is the least recommended option since it takes a lot of time and effort. But if you’re set on it, here’s how to do it:
- Decide what content and pages you’ll include in your sitemap.
- Open your text editor and follow the syntax for the specific sitemap format (in this case, XML).
- Add all necessary XML tags.
- Add all URLs to your pages and any extra information about them in tags.
- Save the XML file.
- Tool-generated sitemap: Although not always recommended, there are some online tools like Screaming Frog that can help generate a sitemap.
Remember to generate a sitemap for every new website, redesign, or upgrade. This is to equip the search engines with the latest information.
Pro tip: Sitemaps are not just for the first indexing of a site. Fixing a website's SEO often lies in reviewing and re-submitting the sitemap.
Step 2: Submitting the Sitemap to the Search Engines
The second step is an easy one. Once the XML sitemap is ready to use, click over to the web page that hosts the XML sitemap and copy the URL.
- For Google submissions:
Enter the Google Search Console > Select your property > Sitemaps > Paste > Click Submit
- For Yahoo and Bing submissions:
Enter Yahoo/Bing Webmaster Tools > Sitemaps > Submit a Sitemap
After you submit a website to a search engine, the crawler starts working on the site. When all the pages are accurately mapped and indexed, the site appears in the search engine rankings within a few weeks.
Pro tip: Use the URL inspection tool in the Google Search Console to check your site’s indexability. Remember that submitting just once is preferred as multiple submissions will not make indexing faster.
Step 3: Keeping Your Sitemap Updated
Finally, don’t forget to update your site regularly. Any new website submitted for search engine listing will appear gradually in the search results. The time taken will depend on the site’s SEO strengths, content, and website design. But to ensure your site stays indexed, update the sitemap frequently so crawlers can go over any new content.
You can use our tips here to improve your SEO ranking and visibility.
How To Optimize Your Sitemap To Improve Your Ranking
As we said, website owners need to update their sitemap submissions when significant changes occur. Resubmitting the modified URLs speeds up the process of updating a new page on the search engines. However, this update to the submission should also bring some meaning to the site, such as improving its ranking.
Here are three things every business can do to optimize their sitemap and improve ranking:
1. Add Quality Content and Categorize It
A sitemap must continually be updated with unique, informative, and engaging content for web crawlers to review and rank. The more quality content on a site, the higher its ranking potential.
Moreover, all content should be categorized. Start with a homepage, then add categories and subcategories with relevant links to make all information easily accessible to crawlers. This will also help your website’s SEO.
Pro tip: Quality content is usually long-form content with more terms to rank and more opportunities for linking and value sharing.
2. Use Keywords
Basic SEO practices like using keywords also extend to the sitemap to ensure the website ranks better. Each page in the sitemap, titles, as well as URLs, must contain well-researched, relevant keywords, to attract the search engine. This will, in turn, bring more traffic to the site.
The best way to use keywords in your sitemap is to employ the so-called keyword mapping technique. This refers to tactically assigning keywords to separate parts of your sitemap, such as pages, subpages, titles, URLs, etc.
You can do this in several steps:
- Identify your main/topic keywords and secondary keywords. Create a keyword hierarchy so you know what parts of your sitemap can use which keyword. For example, the primary keyword must go in the main categories, while the secondary can be used in the subcategories.
- Group the keywords in clusters. Building content around one keyword helps simplify the search engine’s crawling.
- Come up with page ideas and URLs to link to them. Based on the keyword clusters you end up with, you can also create a lot of related content (which will be used for your pages and subpages) and with that internal links, favoring search engine’s attention.
Pro Tip: Use keywords in any part of your sitemap you see fit — URLs, pages, anchors, internal links, etc. By repetitively using several keywords, you narrow it down for the search engine, allowing it to understand what you offer, thus speeding up indexing and targeting your audience.
3. List the Sitemap on Root Directories
Listing the sitemap in the site’s root directory is essential to improving the search engine ranking. Listing is excellent for SEO because the top-ranking sites link to new businesses, passing on traffic and establishing credibility.
Online directories are suitable for generating foot traffic too. They promote the new sites in their listings when people search for local businesses. The result is referral traffic, leading potential customers to the business.
How To Check if the Website Has Been Indexed?
One of the easiest ways to check if your website is indexed is by simply going to the chosen search engine’s homepage and typing in “site: yousitename.com” as the search term.
For example, take our site — DesignRush. If you were to type in site: designrush.com you’d get this:
Having your site shown immediately as the first result, with clear meta data, means your site is indexed. Remember that it often takes several days or weeks for the website to appear in the search engines. Of course, you can use some SEO improvement tricks such as backlinking to try and get a faster and more effective indexing.
Submitting a Website to Search Engines Takeaways
Submitting your website to search engines once it's ready is crucial. Even though most search engines will find your website eventually, do you want to risk not listing it and losing potential customers?
Following the right steps and processes, as explained in this article, will make the effort worthwhile. Additionally, don’t forget to submit your website to a search engine whenever you make changes or updates, so the crawlers index it right.
If you need help, we advise looking for professional SEO agencies that can guide you with this process on your next project.
Our team ranks agencies worldwide to help you find a qualified partner. Visit our Agency Directory for the top SEO agencies, as well as:
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