Add your site to Google (Search Console)

Is your website online and ready to receive visitors? If so, now is the perfect time to make sure it gets noticed by a larger audience. With the help of Google, you can ensure that your website is indexed and displayed in search results, making it easy for potential visitors to find your content. Don’t let your website go unnoticed – submit it to Google today and increase your online visibility!

Requirements

• A Google account. Prefer an account dedicated to your site. Avoid personal accounts.
• An indexable site: that is, without a noindex tag or any other directive that the Google bot can block.

Adding the site to Search Console

Start by registering yourself at Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools. This service not only gives you insight into the health of your website from Google’s perspective, but also allows you to manage and optimize important aspects of your website. With Google Search Console, you can not only check that your content is indexed correctly, but also manage your XML site maps, check your structured data and much more. It is an indispensable tool for any website owner who is serious about improving the performance and visibility of his site in search engines.

After you log in, you can add your website to Google Search Console. To do this, click on the menu icon with three dashes on the left side of the Google Search Console dashboard. Next, select the “Add property“.ijde van het Google Search Console-dashboard. Selecteer vervolgens de optie “Eigendom toevoegen“.

A pop-up appears with two possible options:

1. Domain: This is the new method that allows you to track everything within a domain without adding variants, such as subdomains and different protocols (http/https). However, it requires validation at the DNS level.
2. URL prefix: This is the old method where each domain and protocol must be added manually, but several validation methods are available.

In our example, we choose “URL prefix.”

After you add your property, there are several options available to validate that you are indeed the owner of this domain. For example, you can choose the option of adding an HTML meta-tag to the header of your Web site, or uploading an HTML file to the root directory of your domain. Another option is to validate your domain through DNS verification, adding a TXT record to your domain provider’s DNS settings.

Once you have completed your chosen validation method, save your changes and follow Google’s further instructions to complete the validation. This process may take several minutes, but once the validation is complete, your property will be confirmed in Google Search Console.

Now your site is listed in Google Search Console.

But note, just because your site is listed in Search Console does not automatically mean it will actually appear in search results.

To increase your site’s chances of appearing earlier in search results, consider the following steps:

1. Submit an XML sitemap to help search engine crawlers navigate your site.
2. Use the URL inspection tool to request immediate indexing of specific pages.

To inspect a URL, enter your domain name https://voorbeeld.com/ in the field at the top of the Search Console.

Google will then analyze your page and the essential information will then be displayed:

Wait a few minutes to see if your request is validated by Google.

Generally, this causes the URL to appear in search results within minutes by typing the command “site:example.com” into Google.

The next step is to be patient, especially if your site is new, so that the Google bot can crawl through it (depending on the number of pages, this may require several passages from the bot), and that Google’s index is updated so that your different content appears in the search results. This process can take several weeks.