Every business needs a website, and every website needs a presence on Google. Getting onto Google isn’t hard: in fact, once your site is live you can just sit back and Google will discover and index it sooner or later. However, it can take weeks for a new website to be added to Google’s database – weeks in which you’re missing out on business.
What’s more, once your site has been indexed you might well find that not all pages are represented in the way you hoped. Your site is doubtless full of enticing content that offers precisely what your would-be customers are looking for – but in order to get the search rankings and traffic you deserve, you need to ensure that Google’s web-crawling engine has properly explored your site and correctly parsed the key content.
That means taking things into your own hands. Here’s how to tell the world’s biggest search engine that your site exists, and how to help it read and catalogue your site for the best search performance.
■ Mapping your site
When your site first goes live, you can bring it to Google’s attention using the Google Search Console (). Start by logging in, with your regular Google account or one that’s linked to the website, then enter the details of your domain. Google will
