How to Submit your website to Search Engine in 2022
One of the most successful strategies to generate free traffic to your website is to get indexed on Google and other search engines. However, you could be wondering:
What is the best way to submit my website to search engines?
In a nutshell, it depends on the search engine. The deeper explanation is that each has its own set of instructions. This article will teach you the following:
Is It Necessary for Me to Submit My Website to Search Engines?
Both yes and no.
Manual submissions were never intended to be used by search engines. It’s simply inefficient. That is why their bots search the web for websites to index.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, crawling is the process by which search engines look for new links on websites and then “follow” these links. If a link leads to something useful (for example, a useful website), the page is indexed.
This means that search engines are fairly adept at discovering new websites on their own, as long as they are linked to elsewhere on the internet.
But, having said that…
Why Should You Submit Your Website to Search Engines?
Here are a few reasons why you should submit your website to search engines manually:
Peace of mind — It’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to SEO. It’s worthwhile to submit your site manually because it’s so quick.
Inform search engines about your website — Submitting your site using the methods listed below allows you to inform Google (and others) about important information about your site, primarily content updates and significant changes.
It’s a simple opportunity for improvement — By submitting your site, you gain access to a variety of tools that can help you improve your website. You can also notify them that the content has been updated and must be crawled again.
Submitting Websites to Search Engines: Getting Started
Here are a few things you’ll need before you start submitting your site to search engines. To begin, you must be able to access and edit your website.
Backend access is not required to submit a website to search engines, but it may be useful if you need to add features later on.
As an example:
If the website lacks a sitemap.
If your website requires a robot.txt file.
If Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools are not installed.
With access to a site, it is much easier to incorporate them.
These are important prerequisites for getting a website indexed. In fact, having a properly configured sitemap is one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s performance.
Google Search Console
You must first set up Search Console and verify website ownership before submitting your website to Google.
To validate your website, copy the DNS TXT record and add it to your domain name provider to prove domain ownership.
Verifying your site with a DNS record is the preferred method because the DNS record can be left in place indefinitely and does not add extra code to your site.
If you don’t want to (or are unable to) verify your domain in this manner, don’t worry; there are other ways to verify your account.
Webmaster Tools from Bing
Bing makes it very simple to set up Webmaster Tools. If you already have Search Console set up, you can simply import your sites.
After you’ve signed up, simply click the Import button:
IMPORT
This is a simple method for adding your website to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Now that you’ve completed all of the necessary steps, it’s time to begin submitting your website to all of the major search engines.
Let’s start with Google.
What Is the Process for Submitting My Website to Google?
Submitting a website to Google is a simple process.
In fact, adding your sitemap to Google Search Console is the only way to submit your website.
Here’s how it works:
1. Find Your XML Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that contains a listing of all the pages on a website.
It is usually accessible by visiting:
YOURWEBSITE.com/sitemap.xml
Once you’ve located your sitemap, proceed to the next step:
2. Include Your Sitemap in Google Search Console
Open Google Search Console and navigate to Index > Sitemaps.
All you have to do now is paste in your sitemap URL and click submit:
If you have more than one sitemap, simply repeat the process until all of your sitemaps are listed in the submitted section.
To do this, you must first have added and verified your site to GSC.
We have a Search Console guide that will walk you through everything you need to know if you need more in-depth steps. If you want your site to appear on Google News, we also have a guide on how to submit a site to Google News.
3. Submit a Google Page URL
But what if you just want to submit a single page to Google? This is also quite simple.
Go to URL inspection in Search Console and enter the URL of the page you want to index.
If the page is not indexed, GSC will display the message ‘URL is not on Google’. To have it crawled, simply click Request Indexing:
If the page is indexed, you’ll see ‘URL is on Google’:
If you’ve recently updated content and want Google to recrawl the page, you can click on ‘Request Indexing’ to index those page changes.
How Can You Tell If Your Page Is Listed on Google?
Simply enter your website’s URL into Google to see if it has been successfully submitted and indexed. If Google crawled and indexed your website, it will appear in search results.
Try copying a paragraph or two of text from your site and searching for “quotation marks.” If your page is listed on Google, it should appear.
Another option is to use Google’s search operator command “site:” Simply type:
site:www.YOURWEBSITE.com
How Do I Get My Website Listed on Yahoo?
So far, this is the simplest. To get your website to appear on Yahoo, you must first submit it to Bing.
That was not a typo. When you submit your website to Bing, it is also submitted to Yahoo.
So proceed to the next section to get your site listed on Bing:
How Do I Get My Website Listed on Bing?
To begin, navigate to Bing Webmaster Tools. You must ensure that it is configured for your site. If you need assistance, check out our Bing WMT guide.
Submitting your sitemap in Bing is as simple as it is in Search Console. Simply select ‘Sitemaps’ from the menu, enter your sitemap URL, and click the ‘Save’ button.
How Do I Get My Website Listed on DuckDuckGo?
The short answer is that you don’t.
DuckDuckGo indexes the web automatically, so you don’t need to manually submit your website to them.
In fact, it uses over 400 sources and Bing’s search results, so if you’ve already submitted your site to Bing (and Yahoo), you’ve done everything you need to do to speed up indexing on DuckDuckGo.
Additional Resources for Search Engine Submission
Most search engines have distinct methods for adding web pages to their index. Here are links to the official pages where you can submit your website to search engines:
CONCLUSION
Even if you don’t manually submit your website to Google or other search engines, they will eventually find it.
Nonetheless, using a sitemap to submit your site is highly recommended, and if you don’t have one properly set up, it’s worth doing. Why? It provides additional information about your site to search engines, and in exchange, you receive additional indexing data about your site (maybe even sitelinks).
Submitting a website to search engines is extremely beneficial for informing search engines about content updates and changes. Forcing a new crawl allows you to speed up the process of ranking for newly-added keywords rather than old ones that are no longer relevant.