The Hows & Whys Of Submitting Websites To Search Engines

If the various search engines are not aware of the existence of your website, your desire for it to rank well on various SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), even with professional help, is not an unlikelihood; it is an inability.

While the search engines may, in the end, crawl your website even without you submitting it, the question is: why wait for it to happen when you can manually speed up the process of appearing in various SERPs?

Do I really need to submit my website to search engines?

Submitting your website to your preferred search engine is not essential, but it certainly is beneficial. Even without going through this step, search engines, such as Google, are constantly crawling through cyberspace for new webpages and sites to introduce to users. At the end of the day, search engines are not designed to need manual submissions to function. Hence, the use of A.I. to crawl.

Here are a few advantages to submitting:

• Improve your website: Submitting your website to the various search engines opens up access to an available, free tool that can help improve your website.
• Give search engines more information: Any changes to your website content will immediately be notified to the search engines, which might help it to rank better on SERPs.
• Better safe than sorry: Submitting your website to search engines comes at no cost. So, why not do it rather than wait for the search engines to “chance” upon your website?

How do I know if my website has been indexed?

A website indexed by search engines means that the search engine crawler has analysed it for information and content. Indexed websites are then displayed on the SERPs.

Many online guides might advise you to check your indexing status by searching Google for site:yourwebsite.com.

For example:

However, it may not be entirely reliable and does not reveal any information regarding the indexing of the website or page. Using tools provided by the search engine is a more reliable method to check the website’s or page’s indexing status.

For Google, you may google Search Console, head to the coverage section under index, then select any valid tabs to get detailed information about your website’s indexing status. However, if you want to know the indexing status of a specific page, then you need to use the URL inspection tool. With that tool, you can:

• Retrieve information about the specific URL’s current index status and know why Google could or could not index the page.
• Submit a request for Google to index your page.
• Troubleshoot a non-indexed page.
• View a rendered screenshot of the page, allowing you to see how Googlebot views the page.

Improving your SERP ranking after your website has been indexed

Getting indexed by search engines is not enough to rank well – most users do not click beyond the first page of their SERPs. Hence, after you have ensured that your website or pages have been thoroughly crawled and indexed, the next step is to ensure that you are ranked at a high position. Even for most experienced SEO professionals, this is something that cannot be rushed, taking the consistent effort and lots of time. However, some of the things you can do immediately to start the SEO-optimisation process are:

• Optimise your website’s content according to healthy SEO practices, such as using keywords.
• Including alt text to all your images.
• Increasing backlinks from trustable and reputable websites.
• Sharing your website on various social media platforms.

Conclusion

Search engines will discover your website without you manually submitting it to them. However, in the case where you want your pages to appear quickly on your targetted – it is highly recommended to feed search engines with a little more detailed information by submitting them.

It is also worth noting to re-submit any page that you have just updated or changed so that the search engines are aware of the updates. Forcing search engines to crawl through your site enables you to speed up the ranking process for updated information, such as when incorporating new keywords.

At the end of the day, this is by no means a solution to rank well on SERPs. SEO is an ever-evolving field, and getting your pages and sites indexed is the beginning. It is still essential to keep up with proper SEO practices, such as following an SEO checklist or engaging professional SEO services that are kept up-to-date with every Google algorithm update in order to grow your traffic and boost lead generation.