If search engines don’t know your website exists…
Ranking isn’t just unlikely – It’s impossible.
The truth is sometimes even Google needs a little bit of help from you to make sure they are crawling each URL and finding every new change on your site.
That’s what makes search engine submission a must.
This way you ensure that search engines always get the latest version of your site (and see all the value your content offers).
Here’s everything you need to know about search engine submission and how to make sure that search engines like Google always index your website properly.
What Will I Learn?
Search engine submission is when you submit your website to search engines to be indexed and listed in the search results.
And it’s often an overlooked part of SEO.
Getting indexed and listed does not guarantee that you will rank. But in order to rank you need to make sure that search engines are crawling your content. I mean… how else are they going to find your content?
A piece of advice: Don’t pay someone else to do this for you.
I see tons of SEO services offer this service for a one-time fee. It just isn’t worth it.
Search engine submission is easy to do and can even be automated in some cases.
Each search engine has a different way to submit your site.
I will cover search engine submission for four of the major search engines.
Stuck in the Google sandbox period? Read my guide to learn how to get out of Google sandbox as quickly as possible.
You can easily submit your website to Google and request indexing… all through Google Search Console.
This is a free SEO tool from Google that allows you to manage your entire website through the eyes of Google.
To submit your website to Google you will need a Google Search Console account.
Google Search Console is important for SEO in general so make sure you have your website set up properly.
The first thing you need to do is find your XML sitemap.
XML sitemaps are files that list all of the important pages of your website. Googlebot is very good at finding most pages on your website but does sometimes miss a few.
The XML site map helps Google understand the structure of your website and crawl each essential page so it can be added to the index.
The easiest way to find your XML sitemap is to type your domain into a browser and add the following endings:
For example: https://www.searchlogistics.com/sitemap_index.xml
Different websites will have different XML sitemap URLs.
In most cases, it will be one of these. If you don’t have a sitemap you can use something like RankMath (free) to add one easily.
Now that you have the link to your XML sitemap it’s time to submit it to Google.
Log in to your Google Search Console account and click on “Sitemaps”.
Copy your XML sitemap URL, paste it into the “Add New Sitemap” box and click “Submit”.
If it was successful you will see the word “success” under status.
That’s it!
Google will now use your sitemap to make sure it crawls each URL.
Note: Submitting your site/URLs to Google is free and easy, so don’t get caught in the trap of SEO submission software. They just are a waste of money.
Search engine submission to Bing is very similar to Google.
So similar that some might even say that Bing copied Google in lots of ways.
There are 2 methods you can use to submit your site to Bing.
I will show you how to do both so that you can choose your preferred method.
Method #1 is the manual way to submit your sitemap.
First time submitting your sitemap to Bing? Use this method.
First, you will need to make sure that you have a Bing Webmaster Tools account. You will need the XML sitemap URL you found when submitting your sitemap to Google.
Log in to Bing Webmaster Tools or Sign up if you don’t have an account.
This is where you will be adding your XML sitemap for Bing to use.
Click “Sitemaps” and then “Submit Sitemap” button.
Copy and paste your XML sitemap URL into the box and click Submit.
If it was successful you will see the word “success” under status. Bing will now use your sitemap to make sure it crawls each URL.
Want to automate your website’s submission to Bing?
Bing developed a free plugin that you can install and then have your site URLs automatically submitted to the Bing index.
Once you install it, you will get an API key from your Bing Webmaster Tools portal. This allows you to connect your website directly to Webmaster Tools.
The plugin automatically:
…so that Bing always has a fresh copy of all your content.
It’s a great way to improve your Bing SEO without any extra work.
Download and Install the Bing URL Submissions Plugin.
Log in to your Bing Webmasters Tool account and click the gear icon.
Now click API access.
Click View API key and copy your API key.
Head back to the Bing Plugin and paste the API key. Click Start Using Plugin.
You are all done!
Updates and changes on your website will now automatically be submitted to Bing without lifting a finger.
PRO TIPS: Make sure to take advantage of the Bingbot to optimize your SEO results.
Got Bing done? You’re in luck!
Yahoo’s search is powered by Bing search. So if you set up your Bing search engine submissions your site will automatically be submitted to Yahoo.
So there’s nothing to do here.
DuckDuckGo is different from all the other search engines.
Here’s how:
DuckDuckGo doesn’t allow manual website submissions. There is nothing you can do to get your website submitted to DuckDuckGo – except wait for DuckDuckBot to find it.
Thankfully DuckDuckGo finds and indexes websites from over 400+ different sources.
This includes:
And a lot of other partners. They don’t use Google as a source.
The best thing to do is make sure that you have good internal linking within your content and keep your site updated with Bing.
Think of search engine submission as your personal communication with each individual search engine.
Here are four big benefits of search engine submission.
Search engines need to know your content exists before they can crawl and index it.
Submitting your website to a search engine is like inviting your friend to come over to your house and look at the new kitchen you just installed.
If you didn’t tell them about it, how would they know?
The search engines then work out how that content will best serve their readers and you will be listed in the search results.
Submitting your website to search engines is the best way to maximise your visibility in the SERPs.
Imagine writing an amazing piece of content and finding out later that the search engines didn’t index it simply because they didn’t know it existed.
Search engine submission makes sure this is never an issue.
It can take search engines up to 4 weeks to recrawl your website.
This depends on a number of factors – most of which you don’t have control over. So what happens when you update a page or add a new one?
You have a choice:
You can wait for the search engine to naturally re-crawl it and hope they pick it up automatically.
Or… submit your URLs to Google and Bing to make sure they know it exists.
This will get your site changes indexed faster and your fresh content in front of people in the SERPs.
The choice is pretty obvious.
This is the main benefit.
Search engines love websites that have high-quality content and are updated regularly.
Search engine submissions are the best way to tell search engines every time you update your site or release a new piece of content.
You get these changes into the search indexes quickly, which means you rank:
When you submit your site to search engines, you get access to a range of tools that will help you further improve your site SEO.
Search engines want to serve their users in the best way possible.
That’s why they provide tools for free like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools help you see how your website is performing in organic search and show you where to improve.
The most recent example of this is core web vitals. You can directly track and improve core web vitals directly inside of Google Search Console.
These helpful insights are a direct result of submitting your site to search engines and seeing the results they report back.
Search engines are getting smarter…
But they are still far from perfect. Eventually, search engines will be able to find every page on your website without you telling them.
The reality is this-
We aren’t there yet. Search engine submission is the best way to help them until they catch up.
What’s more?
You will receive all the benefits of it. Search engine submission allows you to speed up the process of ranking to get ahead in the SERPs. That’s an easy win!
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A site not submitted to search engines will remain invisible…its better handled by seo experts
Yeah, you’re right. But not everyone can afford to hire SEO experts, so I wanted to show people how they can submit their site to search engines without spending anything.