Why is my Website NOT showing up on Google?

W When you publish your new website, you will want the world at large to know it exists. That usually means getting the biggest search engine, Google, to include your website in its index. Before Google includes any website in its index, it must first crawl the site. That means Google must send its automated tool for gathering information from the World Wide Web to your website. There are only two ways this can happen:

• Google gets a link to your website from another site it has crawled

• You directly inform Google about your website using Google Search Console

Of these two ways, the first is often the fastest one. Therefore, you should try to get links to your new website from other established websites. There are various ways to achieve this.

1. Use social media

Create accounts on as many social media websites as you can. All of the most popular social media sites allow you to enter a website link in your profile. You can also make posts that include a link to your website.

2. Post your link on blog sites

Do a search for the world’s most popular blogs, and look for opportunities to post on them. Many blog sites will prohibit links in blog posts, but most will allow you to set up a short profile in which you can link to your website. You will need to create interesting and original blog posts if you are to have any chance of getting them published. Your blog post may be rejected if it looks like a spamming attempt to get your website mentioned, so keep that in mind when posting. Your best chance of benefiting in the long term from the link is if your blog post somehow relates to your website content. 

Look for opportunities to comment on existing blog posts where you can also add a link to your new website. 

3. Post your link on forums

Look for forums that deal with topics related to your website’s content. As with posting on blog sites, it is best to post on forum topics that have some connection with your site. For example, if your website is all about yoga, you will get no long-term benefit posting on a forum dealing with auto maintenance. 

4. Ask your friends and contacts to mention your website

You are bound to have friends and contacts who regularly post on social media or blog sites. Ask them to put in a reference and a link to your website.

5. Using Google Search Console

You can use Google Search Console to check out many important aspects of your website. By registering a new Google account, or linking an existing account, you let Google know about your website. The search console lets you tell Google the location of your sitemap. That should help get your website crawled quickly. The search console will tell you when your site has last been crawled, and will show you what pages have been indexed. It is important to take corrective action if search console identifies any problems with your website.

Getting your website crawled is only the first step to getting it noticed. Just because Google, or any of the other search engines, crawls your website does not mean it will include your site, or all its pages, in the search engine index. A site that is not indexed will not appear in search engine results. If your site has been crawled but not indexed, you will need to take further action to get indexed.