Why isn't my site showing on Google?
One of the most common questions we get asked when we put a site live is "why can't I find my website on Google?" It's a natural enough question - we think it's entirely understandable that once your site is live you'll want to be able to find it. Unfortunately, the reality isn't quite as instant as we'd all love it to be!
It's important to remember that while Google is smart, it's still trawling millions of websites every day. It finds those websites, tries to decide what they are all about, then compares them to other websites in similar topic areas to decide which are the most relevant. After doing all of that it decides an order to put the websites into and presents that back to us as our search results. It's very clever stuff.
Step 1:
The first thing that needs to happen is for Google to find your website address and acknowledge your site exists at all. Over time this will happen automatically...in one of Google's many crawls across the internet it'll find your new url/domain/website address and put it into it's database. If you want to speed that process up, you'll need to submit your site to Google using their Webmaster Tools (ask your web designer about these, or just Google "submit site to Google"). If you've got a really unique company name like "Jiggy Jumpy Jobs" and your website url is unique as well ie "jiggyjumpyjobs.co.nz", then pretty much as soon as Google has crawled your site you'll be able to search "Jiggy Jumpy Jobs" and your site will pop up at the top of the list. However, if you have a generic company name or website address (eg "New Zealand Jobs" - newzealandjobs.co.nz), then you'll have to wait longer for your site to appear high in the search results. Why? Because Google will compare you against all the other New Zealand Job websites out there.
Step 2:
Once Google has done an initial crawl and your site has made it into their database, you'll be eager for it to move up the rankings in the important search terms your company works in. So Jiggy Jump Jobs will obviously want to hit the top of that New Zealand Jobs search, because that will get alot more search hits (and potential customers) than just a jiggy jumpy jobs google search. That's where online advertising and in particular search engine optimisation comes in. By saying the right things in the right places and constantly monitoring your website you can try to shortcut to the top of those important results. It's something that can't really be covered in one blog post, and you'll usually need some expert advice on it, but it's definitely worth considering.
The summary and tips
- Choose a website url that is going to help you in BOTH the general search terms as well as one about your business. Using 543 an example, "websitedesign.co.nz" would be the perfect generic url, and "543.co.nz" would be really easy for searches looking to find 543 specifically - so we combined the two into "543websitedesign.co.nz". That url gives Google specifics about our company AND the more generic, descriptive search term. If you're a local business, think about including your city or region in the website address as well. As an NZ company, you should also be thinking about using .co.nz rather than .com.
- Once your site goes live submit your site to google, yahoo and bing.
- Give it a few weeks. Every site takes a bit of time to appear in search results, so patience is a virtue.
- Advertise on Google & Facebook early. If you want to cut out the delay in appearing in search results, pay for some advertising so you sit at the top of the pile immediately.
- Run a search engine optimisation plan. The monthly cost should more than pay for it further down the line when your site is getting tons of traffic from being at the top of the search list.
