How to Submit Your Website or a URL to Search Engines

Submitting your website to a hunt motor helps you get much postulation from search. It gets the hunt motor to crawl your pages and determine whether (and how) to scale them.

The champion part? Submitting your tract to hunt engines is free. You don’t request to usage a paid service.

This nonfiction volition locomotion you done the step-by-step process of submitting your site—or circumstantial leafage URLs—to the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex hunt engines.

And however to usage a instrumentality similar Site Audit to troubleshoot immoderate indexing issues that hap aft you’ve submitted your site.

Do You Need to Submit Your Website to Search Engines?

It’s astir definite that hunt engines volition yet find your site. But adding your tract to hunt engines has these benefits:

• Peace of mind: You’ve alerted hunt engines of your site’s existence, truthful you won’t person to hold and wonder
• Faster crawling: When you taxable your tract to a hunt engine, it whitethorn adhd it to its precedence queue and crawl it sooner
• Higher rankings for applicable keywords: Search engines whitethorn beryllium capable to marque much informed ranking decisions erstwhile you stock your tract operation alternatively of leaving them to fig it out

How to Submit Your Website to Google

Submitting a tract to Google involves 2 main steps:

1. Find Your XML Sitemap URL

An XML sitemap is simply a record that lists the pages connected your site.

For example, here’s portion of the XML sitemap for Semrush’s blog:

When you supply search engines with your XML sitemap’s URL, they tin sojourn the sitemap to discover—and past crawl—your site’s pages.

A website’s XML sitemap URL is usually this:

yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Or this:

yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Try entering these URLs into your browser to presumption your site’s XML sitemap.

If this doesn’t work, your site’s robots.txt record mightiness amusement the close sitemap URL to use.

Access your site’s robots.txt record astatine this URL:

yoursite.com/robots.txt

And look for your sitemap URL successful this file:

Further reading: WordPress Sitemap: How to Create, Check, and Submit One

2. Add Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Connect Google Search Console (GSC) to your website if you haven’t already done so. After that, unfastened GSC and click “Sitemaps” successful the near sidebar.

Type your sitemap URL into the “Add a caller sitemap” setting. Then, click “Submit.”

If Google successfully processes your sitemap, the presumption volition accidental “Success.”

Further reading: How to Submit a Sitemap to Google (in 4 Simple Steps)

How to Submit Your Website to Bing

Add your tract to Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already. Then, unfastened Bing Webmaster Tools and click “Sitemaps” successful the near sidebar.

Click “Submit sitemap” astatine the apical right.

A “Submit sitemap” pop-up volition appear. Type your sitemap URL into the fixed field. And click “Submit.”

If Bing successfully processes your sitemap, the presumption volition accidental “Success.”

Further reading: Bing Search Guide: History, AI Features, and SEO Tips

How to Submit Your Website to Yahoo

Bing powers Yahoo’s hunt engine. By submitting your website to Bing, you’ll besides taxable it to Yahoo.

How to Submit Your Website to DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo draws astir of its hunt results from Bing. So, submitting your website to Bing helps it look connected DuckDuckGo, too.

How to Submit Your Website to Yandex

Open Yandex Webmaster and verify your site.

Once your verification is complete, click “Indexing” > “Sitemap files” connected the near sidebar.

Type your sitemap URL into the “Add Sitemap file” field, and past click “Add.”

Yandex volition past adhd your sitemap to its processing queue. Processing whitethorn instrumentality 1 to 2 weeks. If it successfully processes your sitemap, the presumption volition accidental “ok.”

How to Check if a Website Is Indexed

Submitting your website to a hunt motor doesn’t warrant its quality successful the hunt results. That’s due to the fact that determination whitethorn beryllium issues preventing the hunt motor from indexing your site’s pages.

Here are 2 methods for checking if a hunt motor has indexed your website:

Run an Online Search

Use this hunt query:

site:yoursite.com

The hunt motor volition instrumentality results from your tract if it has indexed it:

Otherwise, it volition not amusement immoderate results.

This method besides checks if a hunt motor has indexed a circumstantial page.

(Note: This method is reasonably reliable arsenic a starting constituent but not a cleanable root of information astir webpage indexation.)

Use Google Search Console

Log successful to GSC and click “Pages” successful the near sidebar. Then, click “View information astir indexed pages.”

Scroll down to the “Examples” conception to spot a database of your site’s pages successful the Google index. The study tin amusement up to 1,000 URLs.

Alternatively, here’s however to cheque if Google has indexed a circumstantial page:

Type its URL into the “Inspect immoderate URL successful [your website]” hunt barroom astatine the apical of immoderate GSC screen. Then, deed “Enter” oregon “return” connected your keyboard.

You’ll spot the connection “Page is indexed” if Google has indexed the page.

Otherwise, you’ll spot this message: “Page is not indexed: URL is chartless to Google.”

How to Fix Indexing Issues

If your tract has indexing issues, immoderate (or all) of its pages won’t look successful the hunt results.

As a result, you’ll suffer organic traffic.

Indexing issues include:

• 404 errors: The web server cannot find a leafage astatine that URL
• The URL has a meta robots “noindex” tag: This tag tells hunt engines not to scale the URL
• Duplicate content: Search engines whitethorn not scale a leafage whose contented is astir identical to different page’s

Use these tools to find and hole indexing issues:

Google Search Console

Go to GSC and click “Pages” successful the near sidebar to load the “Page indexing” report.

Scroll down the report. Under the “Why pages aren’t indexed” section, you’ll spot the fig of pages Google isn’t indexing and the reasons.

Click immoderate indexing issue, and past scroll down to spot wherefore circumstantial URLs aren’t getting indexed. You tin presumption up to 1,000 examples.

Scroll backmost to the apical of the page. Then, click “Learn more” to get Google’s mentation of the indexing contented and suggestions for fixing it, if available.

Site Audit

Site Audit is simply a instrumentality that checks for implicit 140 method tract issues—including indexing problems. To usage it, log successful to your Semrush relationship and click “SEO” > “Site Audit” successful the near sidebar.

Click “+ Create project” to commencement a caller tract project.

Fill retired your site’s domain and an optional task name. Then, click “Create project.”

On the “Configure basal settings” screen, acceptable up the:

• Crawl scope: Whether Site Audit should cheque your site’s subdomains
• Limit of checked pages: The fig of pages the instrumentality should cheque each time
• Crawl source: The spot wherever the instrumentality tin find your site’s URLs. Leave the mounting arsenic “Website” if you’re unsure.

Click the steps numbered 2 to six connected the near to configure optional settings. Like the URLs Site Audit should ignore.

Then, click “Start Site Audit.”

Site Audit volition scan your tract for issues. When it’s done, click the “Issues” tab and take “Indexability” from the “Category” drop-down.

The instrumentality volition show the indexing issues it detected connected your site.

Click immoderate contented to presumption the pages experiencing it:

Then, click “Why and however to hole it” to larn much astir the contented and however to hole it.

Should You Use a Website Submission Service?

Submitting your tract to hunt engines straight is fast, easy, and free. So a hunt motor submission work is apt unnecessary.

Some webpage submission services assertion they tin get your tract onto little-known hunt engines and directories similar Ask.com and Yippy.

But the immense bulk of radical usage Google arsenic their hunt engine. As of May 2024, its planetary marketplace stock was implicit 90.8%.

So, arsenic agelong arsenic your tract is connected Google, you’re successful bully shape.

Using a website submission work tin besides origin your SEO rankings to instrumentality a hit.

Why?

Because immoderate of these services impact you paying different sites to nexus to yours—which results successful unnatural linking behaviour that Google doesn’t like. If Google catches you doing this, it whitethorn penalize your site.

Some links you bargain whitethorn besides beryllium toxic backlinks that wounded your rankings. Semrush’s Backlink Audit tin assistance you find and disavow these links. But it’s easier to debar buying perchance harmful links successful the archetypal place.

So, instrumentality with the hunt engines’ authoritative website submission options.

Submitting your tract to Google and different hunt engines isn’t analyzable and doesn’t instrumentality long. As agelong arsenic you travel the steps, your URLs should beryllium indexed successful nary clip astatine all.

But if you brushwood indexing issues aft submitting your site, usage Site Audit to troubleshoot and hole the problem.