Let’s say you are a small business who is just starting out and just created your first website. You’ve got a basic understanding of search engine optimization and designed a site that is user-friendly, loads quickly, and has great content relevant to the keywords you want to show up for. What do you do now? You can just let your website sit, maybe link to it on your social media accounts or online listing sites. Google will probably find it eventually—after all, Google is great at discovering content on the web. However, it can take a while.
Or, you can tell Google about your website. This is SEO 101, but a lot of small businesses don't know that you can tell Google about every page on your website and it’ll check them out right away. While it doesn’t guarantee that your site will rank well, it means that Google at least evaluates your site and gives it the chance to rank, much quicker than if Google has to stumble across your site on its own.
The Secret: Google Search Console
The secret is Google Search Console. This is a free tool that allows you to submit your sitemap to Google, which they use to learn about every page on your website and decide if they should be included in the search results. It’s free and easy to use if you know what you’re doing. We’ll tell you how to set it up in a minute, but first, check out the power of using Google Search Console.
Case Study: Using Search Console Skyrocketed Rankings for This Small Business
We recently helped a client who had a site that was built to be SEO-optimized, but still wasn’t ranking very well. We quickly discovered that no sitemap had been submitted in Search Console yet and that Google only knew about the home page. None of the keyword-optimized landing pages were able to appear in search results simply because Google had no idea they existed. We submitted the sitemap in Google Search Console to tell Google about the rest of the site. Literally the next day, the site’s ranking exploded, as all of the landing pages started to rank in the search results. Check it out in the graph below.
Setting Up Google Search Console
Convinced you need to be using Google Search Console for your new website? Here’s what you need to do.
The first step is to set up your Google Analytics account. By doing this, you will prove to Google that you actually own your website.
Once you have your Google Analytics account set up and tracking your website, you’ll want to visit Google Search Console while logged into the same Google account you set up Analytics with. You should find a screen asking you to create a new property (website). Copy and paste the full URL of your site’s homepage into the "URL Prefix" box and continue. Because you have already claimed the URL in Google Analytics, you should be automatically verified. There are other methods to verify the site, but Google Analytics is the easiest, in our opinion.
Now that your site is verified, you will want to click on “Sitemaps” under "Indexing" on the left menu. This is where you can submit a sitemap, which is a list of all the pages on your site. Most websites have a sitemap that is autogenerated by the CMS, such as WordPress or Squarespace. Below are the most common URLs of sitemaps. To find your sitemap, sub out example.com for your URL and visit the URL in your browser.
- example.com/sitemap.xml
- example.com/sitemap_index.xml
- example.com/sitemap/
- example.com/sitemapindex.xml
- example.com/sitemap-index.xml
If you can’t find your sitemap, reach out to your web developer or the platform you used to build your site. Once you have located your sitemap, simply paste the URL into the sitemap field and submit it. Google will visit the sitemap and crawl every page on your site, usually within a day or two. After that, it can start indexing your site so it can show in the search results. Search Console will also tell you which pages it has indexed and flag any issues that prevent pages from being indexed.
Ready to Take Your Website to the Next Level?
Setting up Google Search Console and submitting your sitemap is a great first step in getting your website noticed by the search engine, but it’s only the beginning. Just because Google knows about your website, doesn't mean it will rank it well in the search results. If you really want to rank well, ongoing SEO is essential. At Kite Media, we specialize in helping small businesses optimize their websites to reach more customers and grow online.
Whether you need expert SEO strategies to boost your rankings or a professional web design that’s both user-friendly and search engine optimized, we’ve got you covered. Let us handle the technical work, so you can focus on what you do best—running your business.
Contact us today to learn how our SEO and web design services can help you build a strong online presence and achieve long-term success!