Search engines bridge sites and pages to millions of people worldwide. By getting indexed in search engines, your website’s visibility and organic traffic will surely skyrocket.
Unfortunately, search engines like Google and Bing typically require time to discover and index new websites in their database. It can take weeks (or even months) before your content appears in search results.
But here’s a solution: you can submit your website to “help” search engines to index them faster. If you’re wondering how to do this, you’re in the right place. In this guide, we'll teach you how to easily submit a website to Google and other search engines.
Go, go, go!
What it means to submit a website to Google search engine
In a nutshell, submitting a website is like telling search engines that your site exists. In this process, you request the search engine to crawl and index your website by providing information about its structure and content.
To be clear, submitting a website to make its content appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) is not required. Search engines have web crawling software that hops around existing sites and pages to discover new content.
For instance, Google’s Googlebot scans the web to crawl new pages and eventually index them to their collection. This collection is a library of pages that Google extracts when people search. Once your site is indexed, it will be part of this library and start ranking in SERPs.
In short, search engines can possibly discover your new website without you submitting it. However, it might take too long before the search engine finds your site. So, in hopes of expediting this “discovery” process, owners can submit their websites to encourage crawlers to visit their content.
What do I need to submit my website to Google search engine?
You need a completed, ready-to-publish website before you request Google to crawl it. Submitting a half-baked site is a big no-no.
The next important thing you must prepare is a sitemap. A sitemap (typically an XML file) provides information about your website’s important pages and files. When Google crawls a site, it usually “reads” its sitemap to effectively index the content on a website.
If you’re using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, or Wix, your website’s sitemap might be automatically created. You can view it using any of these URLs: [yourdomain].com/sitemap.xml OR [yourdomain].com/sitemap_index.xml
Read more | Wix indexing
If you can’t find your sitemap, perhaps you need to build one.
Although sitemaps can help a search engine discover and index your content, they are not a surefire tool for indexing every piece of content on your site. It’s still up to the search engine to decide what content to include in its index.
Lastly, you need a webmaster tool or platform where you can submit your website to the search engine. For instance, Google Search Console (GSC) is a tool that allows owners to request Google to index their website. It’s essential that you have already verified your website ownership to use GSC, as you cannot use the tool’s features otherwise.
How to submit website to Google
To submit your website to the Google search engine, simply follow the steps below:
Step 1: Prepare your site’s XML sitemap.
To be specific, you need your sitemap’s URL as it is the one you will provide to submit your site.
Step 2: Log in to Google Search Console.
Step 3: Click “Sitemaps” under Indexing on the left menu.
Step 4: Enter your sitemap’s URL in the “Add a new sitemap” field. After that, click Submit.
And that’s it! Your sitemap submission encourages crawlers to read the file and pay a visit to your new website. The XML sitemap will be analyzed from time to time.
How to submit a page to Google
If you want to submit individual URLs to Google instead of an entire website, you can also use GSC to do so. Here’s how you can do it:
Step 1: Log in to Google Search Console.
Step 2: Go to the URL Inspection Tool.
Step 3: When you click Test Live URL, Google Search Console will tell you whether the page URL is already indexed by Google. If the GSC says, “URL is on Google,” then you’re all good. Otherwise, click “Request Indexing” to invite Google to crawl the URL.
How to submit website to Bing
If you have a sitemap ready, you can also submit your website to Bing. Similar to GSC, you must verify your website ownership using the Bing Webmaster Tool.
Follow the steps below to submit your site to Bing:
Step 1: Log in to the Bing Webmaster Tools.
Step 2: Select “Sitemaps” on the menu at the left.
Step 3: Paste your sitemap XML file URL and click “Submit” to finish.
Bing will likely start crawling your submitted website upon doing this process.
How to submit website to other search engines
- Yahoo: In 2009, Yahoo! Search's in-house crawler was retired, and Bing now powers Yahoo search. Thus, to submit a website to Yahoo, you must submit it to Bing.
- Yandex: To submit your website to Yandex, start by visiting webmaster.yandex.com account to submit your website URL and verify ownership through various methods. After verification, submit your sitemap to Yandex.
- DuckDuckGo: This search engine does not accept manual submissions. Its web crawlers use various sources, including Bing, to index websites. Thus, if you’ve submitted your website to Bing, it should also appear in DuckDuckGo search results.
More on this: How to submit a website to search engines [guide]
What happens after I submit my website to search engine?
Submitting a website to Google or other search engines is not a sure way to get your website indexed. However, submissions usually make the crawling and indexing process faster than doing nothing.
Once Google recognizes your submission and indexes your site, it will appear in search results. To verify if Google has already indexed your site, type this in the Google search bar:
“site:www.[yourdomain].com” OR “site:[yourdomain].com” (depending on whether or not your web site uses WWW)
[Please note that Google has decided hiding the number of results / indexed pages... So we launched a Chrome extension that fixes this]
If your site appears in SERPs, then Google has likely indexed your website.
You can also use Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool to check if Google has indexed your page. But if you have no time to perform a manual check, you can subscribe to a URL indexing service provider to monitor not only one but hundreds of your web pages’ indexing status daily.
It’s essential to always keep an eye on your pages’ indexing status, as Google usually deindexes sites by accident. In such a case, you must immediately discover this mishap and perform a prompt solution. It’s advisable to use an automated SEO indexing tool to quickly identify URLs that Google suddenly deindexed.
Is it possible to submit and index multiple URLs fast?
Well, you can brute-force URL submissions using Google Search Console. But believe us, it’s a cumbersome process that will take up much of your precious time.
With INDEXED.pro URL indexing tool you can automatically request indexing for up to 200 to 1000 URLs per day. Powered by our very own advanced web crawlers, GSC and Indexing APIs, and a bit of AI, our software can request indexing on autopilot and provide results within 48 hours.
Start using INDEXED.pro today and get your website URLs indexed for only 8€ / month.
What did you think of our guide to submitting your website to Google? Did you get it right? This is something we definitely recommend you do to get your SEO off to a good start....
