Your new web content won’t show up in any Google search results until it has first been discovered (or indexed) by Google—a process that can take anywhere from just a few hours or several weeks. If you are using a newly registered domain name then you will need to Add your domain name to the Google index.
Add my domain to Google
To add your websites domain to Google you can use their handy Add URL tool found here www.google.com/addurl/ this will add your site for Google to index. There's no indication given as to when this will happen, but usually you will notice at least the homepage is added within an hour or so. It can take days - weeks to get your full site indexed and then longer to improve its ranking position.
Check Google has indexed my website
You can determine whether or not your new content or website has been indexed simply by searching for it on Google. Try the following searches:
- Type into Google your address, including the “www” bit. Preface it by also typing in “site:” e.g., site:www.minthair.co.nz
- “Non-www” address. Type in the same address without the “www” bit but still keep the “site:” preface e.g., site:minthair.co.nz
- Your company’s name. Type in the title of your business, and possibly also the industry. Use quotation marks around to ensure it searches for that exact phrase e.g., "Mint Bridal Hair Design.”
- A snippet of unique text. Find some text on your website that’s liable to be unique, and type that in using quotation marks e.g., “When looking for a hairdresser that you can trust creating a hairstyle for your wedding day you will want someone with experience and flair.”
If your content shows up, great! That means it has now been indexed. But if your site doesn’t show up, then it probably hasn’t been indexed yet.
External links
If there are links to your website elsewhere on the web, then the chances of a web crawler discovering your website improves. If it’s a new website, you could add it to your social media profile (or create a new profile specially for it). You should also share the link e.g., do a Facebook post sharing the new link with your friends, or tweet the link out to your followers. We recommend you add your site to Google My Business which is a free directory and adds a Map search result for any local based searches. Another option is to write a post on an external blog in your industry or relevant to your website, make sure there is a link back to your website so Google can connect the dots and give your website some kudos.
Create a sitemap
A sitemap is a list on your server of your website’s pages. It tells a web crawler what pages you have, their relative importance to each other, and how often they get updated. If you’re a Rocketspark customer, your sitemap is automatically generated, so you’ll definitely have one and do not need to do anything further. To check if you have a sitemap, type into your web browser the following: [MyWebsiteDomain.com]/sitemap.xml. If you have a sitemap, it will load. If you’re not a Rocketspark customer and don’t have a sitemap, you can create a sitemap using a sitemap generator (click here to visit one). You can also submit your sitemap to Google by adding your website to Webmaster Tools. There’s a tool for submitting sitemaps located under “Optimization.” If you're a Rocketspark customer you can learn more about setting up Webmaster tools here.
How to get Google to re-index my changes
This is where using Google Webmaster tools is key, you need to fetch your website as Google and then submit the page (Or all pages) to be Indexed. Under the Crawl menu in Webmaster tools choose Fetch as Google, after Google has fetched the page and checked for any issues there is the option to Submit for Index. Read more about this process here.
