Reading Time: 4 minutesAs a new business, one of the most important aspects is making sure everyone can find your site. So how do you get the URL for your business to search engines in general? What about top sites like Bing and Google? This can be a tricky process, unless you have the tools needed to move forward with the submissions.
Submitting to Search Engines
There are some steps required to submit to any search engine. Most of them require something on your end to prepare the website for accessibility through the search engine. Before you can submit your URL to a search engine, you must first have access to edit your website. Some may say this isn’t necessary and you don’t need this access (also called backend access) to submit your URL.
They aren’t wrong, but how do you know if your website requires it? If you can check off the following features, you’re website is safe. If you have any of these, you must have backend access before submitting a URL:
- Your website doesn’t have a sitemap
- Your website doesn’t have a robot.txt file
- Your website doesn’t have Tag Manager or another way of verifying Google Search Console/Bing Webmaster Tools access.
If you plan on submitting a full website, you will need more than just the previously listed features. By uploading a full website, everything is accessible through that one URL. This can create issues if you don’t have everything you need prior to submitting.
The following is a list of important factors you must have should you wish to submit a full website to a search engine:
- A sitemap index with categorized sitemaps
- Optimized robots.txt
- Submission of the sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
It’s also possible to submit the URL for an individual page. If you aren’t seeking to get your entire website out there in one shot, try submitting a single page to the search engine. Just be sure you get the page indexed so it will show up properly in search results.
Submitting to Google
Attempting to submit your URL directly to google can be a bit of a challenge. It’s important to do your research and ensure you are following all of the steps and have all of the information Google requires in order to submit a URL.
The first step in registering with Google is to be sure your URL and app (if you have one) are registered with Google Search Console. Once you’ve done this, they ask that you use their Sitemaps report to locate any errors or to submit the new sitemap for your URL.
If you’ve already taken all the previously listed steps to submitting your URL to Google, you’re ahead of the game. Now you need to continue to keep them informed. If you make any changes to your data or you change something about your sitemap, you need to report these changed immediately. It’s much easier for Google to keep your URL in the system and allow it to show on their search results if the information is up to date and the site is running properly.
Submitting to Bing
Bing is a little more complicated than Google when it comes to submitting your URL; however, it’s just as important to follow their required steps as it is for Google.
When submitting to Bing, be sure you are in the Configure My Site section of Bing’s Webmaster Tools or the Submit URL API area. These two sections are the main, and most used, for Bing’s URL submissions. Bing does control how many URLs you submit per day and per month, so be sure to do your research before submitting.
The quota for how many URLs you can submit is based on the site’s verified age, shown in Webmaster Tools. For example, if Webmaster tools shows your verified age to be less than 30 days but more than 7 days, you are able to submit up to 1,000 URLs per day. This number changes as your site age changes and you can eventually submit up to 10,000 URLs per day.
It’s important to follow Bing’s rules for submission and their policies on submitting and maintaining your URLs and sitemaps. By following these rules, you can ensure a higher rating with Bing and be able to advance your account with them further in the future.
Conclusion
All of this information seems like a lot. Perhaps it is, but it’s also very important. You cannot have a URL with a search engine if you don’t follow these steps and the rules of the specific search engine. It can be a lot of work to submit and maintain a URL, but it’s also important if you expect anyone to find your website and know your company exists.
Submitting your URL to search engines is the most important part of creating your business online that you can do. Following the steps to ensure it’s done correctly and that the website is maintained properly can benefit your new company in so many ways.
Be sure you have followed all of the steps listed above, regardless of which search engine you choose. Most of them will require a lot of the backend and sitemap information to be set up that way before considering allowing your URL submission. Some of them might let the other points slide, but most are adamant about sitemaps and having everything finalized with backend access. As long as you continue to follow the tips provided, you could have your URL up and running with the search engine of your choice in no time.
