You don't have to submit your website for search engines to find it, but you can tell Google and Bing about it yourself, for free. Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. If you have SEO PowerUp, you can also give them your sitemap (a list of your pages). Nobody can guarantee when your website appears or where it ranks, including us.
Before you start
- Publish your website and check it's live at its address. Open it in a private browser window.
- Check your pages can be listed. Select a page, go to the Inspector's Page Settings tab, open Search Engine Optimization, and make sure Include page in search engines is ticked. If you change it, publish again.
Tell Google
- Go to Google Search Console and sign in with a Google account.
- Add your website. Google asks you to prove it's yours, usually with a TXT record (a line added to your domain's DNS settings).
- On EverWeb Hosting: send us the record and we'll add it. It can take a few hours to work.
- On another host: add it in your host's or registrar's DNS settings, or ask them to.
- Once it's verified, type your home page address in the search box at the top (URL inspection) and click Request indexing.
- If you have SEO PowerUp, open Sitemaps, type sitemap.xml after your address and submit it.
Tell Bing (and the search engines that use it)
Bing's results also appear in other search engines. Yahoo uses Bing, and DuckDuckGo gets most of its ordinary results from Bing. So one sign-up covers more than Bing.
- Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in.
- Add your website. If you've already verified it in Google Search Console, you can import it from there, which saves verifying it again.
- If you have SEO PowerUp, open Sitemaps and submit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, using your own domain.
You don't need to submit to any other search engine.
What SEO PowerUp adds
SEO PowerUp is an add-on for EverWeb. Each time you publish, it:
- creates your sitemap, at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- creates a robots.txt file with a line pointing to the sitemap, so search engines can find your sitemap file
- lets you set Include in XML Sitemap, Priority and Change Frequency for each page in Page Settings
- gives you Check Page suggestions on every page
It's included with EverWeb + Hosting 10GB and larger. Otherwise, order it in your Client Area under Services > View Available Addons.
To turn it on:
- Quit and reopen EverWeb. If it still asks you to buy the add-on, sign out and back in: on a Mac at EverWeb > Settings > Account, or on Windows at Edit > Options > Account.
- Go to File > Edit Publishing Settings and tick Optimize & Submit Website to Search Engines.
- Go to File > Publish Entire Site.
Search engines find your sitemap through robots.txt. To tell Google and Bing straight away, add it in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools as above. You only need to do that once, because they come back to it.
How long it takes
A few days to a few weeks is common for a new website, and some take longer. For what to check if you still can't find your website, and what Search Console's messages mean, see Why can't people find my website on Google?