Step By Step Guide: Submit URL To Google

Intro

Are you struggling to get Google's attention to your website? The key to boosting your online visibility starts with a simple yet critical step many overlook: getting your URL indexed by Google. This simple action can significantly enhance how quickly and efficiently Google indexes your website, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Imagine the impact on your traffic and engagement when your site ranks high in Google searches. With our simple step-by-step guide, we'll walk you through the entire process of submitting your URL to Google, ensuring you're not missing out on this essential aspect of SEO.

This simple guide will give you all the steps to submit your URLs to Google confidently and efficiently. Let’s get started.

Why would you manually submit a URL to Google?

Submitting your URLs directly to Google's index is an active way to ensure that new or recently optimized web pages are discovered and older ones are re-crawled, which is essential for effective SEO. Get that latest blog post you published indexed quickly rather than wait a few weeks for Google to index it in one of its crawls, and justify the money you have spent on getting nifty AI SEO tools.

Step 1: Sign Up for Google Search Console

Google Search Console is your go-to place to submit URLs to Google directly. Here are the essential steps to get started.

Set Up Your Account

• Sign into your Google Search Console homepage.
• Sign in with your Google account.
• Click the "Start Now" button and follow the on-screen instructions to add your website.
• Choose the property you’d like to manage

Verify Website Ownership

Google requires you to prove ownership of your website. Methods include adding a meta tag to your site's homepage, uploading an HTML file, and more. Once verified, you'll gain full access to the Google Search Console features.

The domain name provider is usually the more straightforward method for new websites. After completing the process, you should have earned your green checkmark:

Step 2: Create and Submit a Sitemap

A sitemap is a roadmap for Google’s crawlers. It lists all the URLs on your site, making indexing more efficient.

The Role of a Sitemap

A well-structured sitemap can improve your website's visibility to search engines and enhance your site's SEO. It allows the search engine to navigate your website and index content.

Setup Your XML Sitemap URL

Go to the Sitemaps section and make sure your sitemap URL is submitted. If not, simply provide your sitemap URL, which is often /sitemap_index.xml.

Sitemap Creation

If you use WordPress or a CMS, plugins such as RankMath, and Yoast SEO include sitemap generation. For other sites, various tools and XML sitemap generators exist online.

Step 2: Submit Your URL to Google Search Console

With ownership confirmed and your sitemap acknowledged, it's time to start submitting URLs to the Google index and get those urls discovered!

We’ll use the URL Inspection Tool (the search bar on top of the page)

• Click on the URL Inspection tool sign in the Google Search Console dashboard.
• Enter the URL you wish to submit and hit Enter.
• If the URL isn’t indexed, you’ll have the option to request indexing.

Here’s an example with a fake URL which doesn’t exist:

Below, you can find additional information about the URL, such as last crawl information and indexing-related parameters.

Test Live URL

Before clicking the Request Indexing button, you can test that your web page is live and working as expected. Click on the TEST LIVE URL button and wait for the result.

If the check has failed, you will see the following screen with the reasons listed below:

And this is what a successful test looks like:

Now, we will simply click on the Request Indexing Button to submit our content indexed:

Congratulations! You have successfully submitted your page to the next crawl queue!

Step 4: Monitor Your URLs Submission

After submitting your URLs, you can check the Pages section to see if Google indexing has taken place and identify any potential issues preventing indexing.

You’ll see an overview of all the indexing statuses:

Pro tip: not all your pages have to be indexed, especially when you start incorporating tags on links to be nofollow, and pages to be noindex.

In the section below, you can explore more elaborate reasons why the pages weren’t indexed. Should you identify issues with new pages, you can fix them and submit them to the next crawl queue to validate your fixes.

Here’s an example of pages that you might have mistakenly tagged with the ‘noindex’ tag:

Either those tags are justified, or you can fix them and then clicking Validate Fix. Be patient, though, as it might take time for the changes to take effect.

Best Practices for Faster Indexing

To avoid not ranking on Google, we need an optimized approach. This approach involves not just submission but also ongoing website maintenance and content updates. It's a much more holistic approach than quick shortcuts and hacks.

Content Updates

Frequently update your website with fresh, relevant content. The more regularly Google sees new content, the more it will crawl your site and consider you an up-to-date resource.

Avoid Duplicated Content

Also known as “keyword cannibalization,” if you have several pages written around the same keyword (which can happen easily when using AI blogging tools), having all of them appear in the search results is unlikely as they will compete with each other, creating inefficiency.

Site Speed

Make sure your site loads quickly to improve Google’s crawling efficiency and user experience, which will, in turn, indicate to Google that your website is a worthy resource and will receive priority in crawling frequency.

SEO Best Practices

Optimize your content: Implement title tags, meta descriptions, ALT text, URL structures, and keyword-rich content.

Website Health

The fewer issues your website has, whether broken links, poor website structure, or heavy images, Google will see it as a well-built website and prioritize it in the search results and crawling queues.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Sometimes, even with the best practices in place, technical issues can arise. Here's how to address them.

Indexing Delays

Be patient, as indexing can sometimes take longer than expected due to various factors.

Server Errors

Check for server errors to ensure Google can access your site. Apply redirects when needed.

Conclusion

URL submission to Google is an essential part of the indexing process, bringing your website one step closer to the eyes of potential visitors. Sometimes, just waiting for Google to index pages doesn’t cut it, which is why knowing how to submit URLs manually can be very valuable in expanding your online visibility and laying the foundation for a strong SEO strategy.

FAQs

Q: How long does it take for Google to index a URL?

A: Indexing times vary but typically range from a few hours to a week. For some pages, this can extend to several weeks, so patience is key.

Q: Why would Google not index a URL?

A: Google might choose not to index a URL if it’s deemed low quality, has duplicate content issues, is unreachable due to server errors, or if you've decided to exclude it through your robots.txt file.

Q: Do I need to submit all my URLs to Google manually?

A: Submitting every URL is unnecessary, especially when your site is well-crawled. Focus on submitting new content and core pages and ensuring they're correctly linked within your website.