When Will My Website Appear On Google?

(This article was last updated on September 8, 2015.)

The question, “How long will it take for my new website to get ranked on Google?”, is on every new site owner’s mind. For better or worse, there is no simple or definitive answer. Yet the question alone is rich with implication: pathways that lead to deeper layers of information and knowledge about optimizing your website for search, the basics of which I’ll cover in this article and also in other articles on this blog (linked throughout). Bottom line, it’s our job as site owners (and that of our development & marketing teams) to make it as easy as possible for Google to find and understand our websites and where they might fit in in the context of the entire web. If you indulge your curiosity to the broad concepts and the basic steps, and I encourage you to, it will lead you to how you can help Google crawl and index your site and to rank sooner and better than you might have otherwise. These are the fundamentals. Here we go-

Ranking Factors

Where your site eventually ranks in the Google Search Engine Results page (SERPS) will depend on a large number of factors (the precise number is unknown but it’s likely to be several hundred or more), many of which we can only speculate about. Thankfully, that speculation has gone beyond mere hypothesis and is hugely well informed. The definitive existence of all the factors and their level of importance may not be confirmed by Google, but enough have been studied and tested to guide us.

When we’re considering the question of how long it will take for a new site to get ranked, there will always be deeper layers to explore; veritable rabbit holes of information, education opportunities, tasks and also, naturally, at times, a need for technical expertise.

But there is much you can do on your own and in collaboration with your website development team, search and visibility experts. Some of the factors that matter most will take a long-term proactive commitment to digital marketing to achieve them in an ever-changing landscape. They are not one-step functions but a building of context over time, through your relationships with other entities on the web.

The basics are within your grasp and you can read about SEO essentials for the proactive small business owners here and in a companion piece, practical SEO basics and begin to connect the dots of what really matters.

Your Unique Value

Always keep in mind that your business success, conversions and online or digital presence isn’t all about ranking at the top. It’s also about differentiation, your unique value proposition, attracting the right visitors and delivering what they need from you. Getting them to click-through to your site because they are drawn in by your page description and not disappointing them when they do is critical. And then, inspiring them to stick around and explore the answers you’re providing is what will lead them to a commitment to using your services or buying your product: gaining the sale.

There’s also your competition to consider because, of course, you are all vying for the same few spots. Capitalize on what sets you apart and use every opportunity to demonstrate your unique value.

This Is How Your Site Gets Listed On Google

Before immersing yourself in the complex realm of digital marketing and the SEO component of that holistic picture, it’s helpful to understand the beginning stages that will lead you to where you’re headed; through your site being crawled, getting indexed and then earning and maintaining its position in the SERPs.

Google Makes No Predictions And No Promises…
Other Than To Deliver The Best Possible Results To Queries.

Your goal is to be that best possible result.

How Crawling and Indexing Work

These processes of crawling and indexing can take time on Google’s part. They will rely on various pieces being in place to make it possible.

Crawling

Crawling is the process Googlebot uses to discover new and updated pages that it will later add to the Google index. Googlebot is sometimes called things I’m sure you’re familiar with: a robot, bot or spider. When you hear about the Google algorithm, this is what the Googlebot is using to figure out which sites to crawl and how often it will crawl them. It also determines how many pages it will “fetch” from each of those sites. In order to know which pages to crawl, it uses a list of URLs that are incrementally generated as it detects links (to pages). The list grows longer as links are discovered. The index is then updated with new websites and pages, changes to sites that aren’t new and even dead links are included.

Indexing

Once it discovers pages, Googlebot compiles them into an index of all the words it sees and their location on each of the pages. It also processes the information that it encounters in parts of the code of the website.

Results

This is what you will see on the Search Engine Results page (SERPs) – the list of links and page descriptions that are “returned” to you when you conduct a search or query. Google searches their own index for relevant (matching) pages and shows you their best, most possibly helpful results.

Check To See If Your Site Is On Google

If you’ve been (patiently) waiting and are ready to check to see if you’re site has been indexed by Google you can do a simple search using the following:

site:www.fateyes.com. Simply replace www.fateyes.com with your own URL.

If you don’t see your site on Google yet, it may just be that it’s too soon and hasn’t been crawled or indexed yet. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few months.

It’s also possible that they have somehow missed your site and you may want to help it along by suggesting your URL to Google or (see the next section on “Fetch as Google”. Here are some of the other reasons that your site may not be indeed yet:

• Your site isn’t connected to other sites on the web
• The design and layout of your site is making it difficult for Google to crawl
• Google received an error when it tried to crawl your site: DNS issues, Firewalls, intentional webmaster blocking.

Can Google can crawl your page? You can learn about how to check here and check your site URL here.

“The Fetch as Google tool enables you to test how Google crawls or renders a URL on your site. You can use Fetch as Google to see whether Googlebot can access a page on your site, how it renders the page, and whether any page resources (such as images or scripts) are blocked to Googlebot. This tool simulates a crawl and render execution as done in Google’s normal crawling and rendering process, and is useful for debugging crawl issues on your site.”

Better Ranking Basics: What To Consider

Your Identity & Home page: Even though visitors may not enter your site via your Home page, you should still think of that page as the introduction to your organization’s identity. It’s the Welcome and it’s also where you want to invite and entice your visitor to make a deeper foray into your site if they do enter through that “front door” of your Home page. Remember, all the pages on your site should be consistent with the message you communicate about yourself, your services or your product.

Accurate Information: Make sure that the information you include on your site is high-quality and accurate.

Solutions: Give your visitors the information you’ve promised them and that they are looking for. Through your design and content, you can demonstrate to them you are legitimate, that you can supply them with answers to their questions, resolutions to their problem and can fill their needs with your content and its relationship with the good design container you present it in.

Links: Inbound links coming from other sites to yours help Google crawlers find your site and will give it higher visibility. By creating high quality, linkable content that they will want to share with their users and customers you will interest owners of other websites to want to link to yours. The links must be natural and not bought or manipulated. Only natural links will be helpful in indexing or ranking your site.

Easy Access: Use a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable by at least one static text link.

Google Content Guidelines, Technical Guidelines and Quality Guidelines

The Content, Quality and Technical Guidelines here are condensed and roughly paraphrased from the extensive Google’s Official List Of Things To Do. If you’d like to read the unedited and complete version please click through.

Design Guidelines [A Non-Technical list]

• Present a clear navigation hierarchy
• Include a site map
• Don’t over do it with too many links on any one page
• Make your site useful and information-rich
• Be clear and accurate in your information and be consistent
• Tread lightly: In a completely natural and authentic way or not at all Include some phrases or words that a visitor might use to find you in a search. Do not force this! Keep it completely reader-friendly
• Google can’t read text that is contained within an image. I.e. graphical text

Quality Guidelines

• Essentially, do no harm. Meaning, be generous, honest and authentic. (this one’s mine)
• Emphasize what makes your site unique, valuable or engaging
• Avoid forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior
• Make pages for users not search engines
• Do not use tricks that you think might improve your search engine rankings
• Think in terms of what will be helpful or useful to your users
• Avoid automatically generated content
• Do not create pages with little or no original content
• Do not load pages with keywords
• Monitor your site for hacking and remove any hacked content as soon as possible

Technical Guidelines

This is a tiny smattering of these guidelines due to their technical nature, but if you have an interest in seeing the complete list, you can follow the link above.

• Make sure your site is Mobile Friendly so it will appear accurately and be usable on all devices
• Test your site to make sure it appears accurately in different browsers
• Monitor your site’s performance and make sure to optimize load times. Faster sites increase user satisfaction.

Summary Of Basics For Better Ranking:

• Deliver value: There’s the overall quality of your site and its relevancy & helpfulness to your customers
• Usability: Your site’s ability to deliver what your customers are looking for and need from you
• Deliver what you promise in your site and page titles and descriptions
• Design: A clear, purposeful design and layout
• Navigation: Easy to understand and follow navigation structure
• Content: quality, relevancy and depth
• Visual interest: attractive, large, high quality, well-optimized images
• The natural use of keyword or search terms in the content
• Inbound links from other relevant, quality sites to yours
• Secure hosting
• Page load speed
• Mobile friendliness for mobile devices, Responsive Web Design
• On-site structure, naming and coding
• Social shares are additional links to your pages that may help Google find your site

So no, there is no simple or definitive answer to the reigning question. But there are a lot of actions you can take to ensure that your site is, in fact, indexed and ranked by Google. And even more you can to do improve your ranking and position in the SERPs.

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Pre-Remixed Photo Credit: iStock 
Re-mix by Gina Fiedel

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