How to Submit a Site to Search Engines in 2022

Whether you’re a blogger or a digital marketer, creating a website to showcase your talent and your services is the most important first step. From developing an impressive digital presence to attracting huge traffic by leveraging any search engine optimization service, putting your site on a search engine can achieve all. 

The trouble arises when you can’t figure out the right and precise ways to submit your site. But today’s your lucky day. 

Here is your definitive guide to following all the requisite steps for publishing your site on your preferred search engine. 

Get ready to get a top ranking and build your domain authority with site submission!

Do you even need to submit your site to a search engine? 

The simple answer is – It depends on the purpose of your website creation. 

You need it

Search engine website submission is a must if you’ve created the site to attract more customers to your online business portal. Not only does it boost your web presence, but it also ensures more leads for you to earn revenue from. 

Search engine optimization of websites is a powerful way to bring in new leads and prospects. Because of the search-optimized content, the engine crawlers will find it easy to navigate through your page and eventually rank it in terms of the quality content you provide. That’s to say, the higher the value you deliver, the greater your ranking on the search engines will be. 

In addition, this method provides an ideal way to nurture organic backlinks to further enhance your overall page ranking. With higher backlinks, the search engine indexing criteria will find your page relevant to your niche and the industry.

Moreover, search engines like Google, Bing, etc., offer you a range of tools to improve your site content, like performance analytics. Essentially, the search engines aim at facilitating high-value content to their audience, and these tools augment their strategy by assisting the page owners. 

You don’t need it

As odd as it sounds, you might not want search engine crawlers to index your site if you’re building a page for:

• Personal purposes
• Intentionally duplicate content
• Advertisement or model-specific landing pages like site for cost-per-click
• Under-development projects
• Internal network creation
• Product testing 

The rationale behind the site creation and the marketing strategy is the crucial consideration factors for submitting it to the search engines. Even though the search engine algorithm doesn’t rely on manual website addition, submission is an excellent method to bring your site to the crawler’s notice. 

What are the preliminary steps to definitely incorporate before site submission? 

Before you begin your submission process, it’s important that your site is functional at the back end. A few things that you must consider include: 

XML Sitemap 

An XML sitemap is an outline for a site enlisting pages to help search engines navigate better. It provides critical information about the URLs on your site, such as videos, pages, images, files, etc. In addition, the sitemap also carries metadata details like the last updated time, frequency of changes, priority comparison, etc. 

If you’re thinking of submitting your site to Google and Bing, a sitemap is an irreplaceable requirement. Check if your website has one by trying out standard locations like: 

• www.YourWebsiteUrl.com/sitemap.xml 

Additionally, you can also check using: 

• /sitemap_index.xml 
• /sitemap/
• /sitemap/sitemap.xml
• /sitemapindex.xml
• /sitemap/index.xml
• /sitemap1.xml
• /sitemap-index.xml
• /sitemap.php
• /sitemap.txt
• /sitemap.xml.gz

This will show the entire list of sitemaps available for a particular website. 

Since sitemaps are available in different fromats, explore further with: 

• /rss/
• /rss.xml
• /atom.xml

However, if you’re still unsuccessful in finding your sitemap, take help from the robots.txt file. Insert your domain name into a browser, add ‘/robots.txt,’ and hit ‘Enter.’ This will definitely take you to the sitemap you require!

Note: If you can’t find a sitemap, create it using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. 

Robots.txt file 

The robot.txt file is an optimization mechanism for search engine crawlers to locate the URLs for accessing and indexing. This is primarily used to restrict request overloading on your site. It defines the crawling route of the web bots, including limited-access or no-access pages. 

Since you know how to look for the robots.txt file, it’s time to find out how to create it before publishing your website. 

Create the text file 

Using Notepad, TextEdit, or any other text editor, create a valid robots.txt file. Make sure that you save the file with UTF-8 coding. Remember not to use word processors as they can add unexpected characters making it difficult for crawlers to read. In addition, your text file must be located at the root of the website host it is applicable on. 

Add rules to your robots.txt file

Each robots.txt file consists of rules for crawlers to navigate with. The file comprises one or more groups, with each carrying multiple directives in every line. Such syntax acts as a language for the crawlers to target a particular set of bots. For instance, a Google crawler can’t read through the URL http://example.com/nogooglebot/ .

Upload the file

Once you’re done creating the crawler directive, i.e., robots.txt file, upload it on your site as per the server architecture. 

Test 

After you’ve finalized the upload on your site, check if the robots.txt can be accessed. You can navigate to the file’s location in your browser by typing the root domain name followed by robots.txt. 

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Set-Up

If you intend to enhance web traffic through Google and Bing search engine submission, setting up the toolsets beforehand is a necessity.

Google 

Checking and verifying your site ownership is an important preliminary step. 

• To validate your site, type ‘Google Search Console’ in your browser, input your domain information without prefixes, and hit ‘continue.’ 
• As soon as the pop-up appears with the DNS TXT record, sign in with your domain name provider and paste the shown TXT link into the DNS record to verify. 

Once your site’s verification comes through, you can submit it on Google conveniently. 

Bing Webmaster Tools 

The Bing Webmaster process is pretty straightforward. 

The new users can add the site URL in Bing Webmaster Tools’ using two methods:

GSC Import

If you’ve already verified your account on Google Search Console, import the settings along with all the properties directly. All you need to do is provide permission from your GSC account to Bing to access the information. Once added, Bing Webmaster Tools shows a list of URLs with the sitemaps to add. You can choose which ones you want to import. 

Manual Addition 

Bing Webmaster Tools allows manual entry of your site by making changes if there’s anything you require altered. In the manual method, Bing needs owner verification of the site. There are four methods for the same, including: 

• DNS auto verification with CNAME insertion
• XML file authentication with customized verification code
• Meta tag authentication using ownership code
• CNAME record addition in the DNS 

How to begin submitting to search engines? 

Now you’re all set to start search engine submission to upgrade your marketing strategies. 

Google Submission

Website addition is really quick and hassle-free on Google. 

Remember the sitemap you extracted? Now is the time to utilize it for the search engine submission of your site. 

• Once your website is verified in Google Search Console, add sitemaps to your account by pasting the URL in the ‘Add a new sitemap’ box. 
• In case you have more than one sitemap, repeat the process until all of your sitemaps are recorded in the ‘submitted sitemaps’ section. 

This is a normal process for site submission on Google except for Google News. According to a change in the search engine policy, publishers are no longer required to submit their site manually for Google’s app and website for news. Mere regulation compliance and quality content production ensure indexing and ranking in the search results. 

In addition, if you want to submit a standalone page on Google, all you need to do is add its URL. 

• In Search Console, visit the URL inspection section and paste the link to the page you want to insert. 
• If the page is un-indexed, Google prompts a message saying ‘URL in not on Google’, which requires you to request indexing. 
• For the indexed pages, GSC shows a ‘URL is on Google’ message.
• You can even utilize this option to help Google recrawl your page after recent content changes and addition.

Once you’ve completed the URL indexing process, it’s time to find your page in search results. Look for the site using the GSC verified URL, or you can also find the webpage by copying any of its content. On top of this, Google also shows your webpage by applying the syntax ‘site:’ before your page’s URL. 

Bing Search Engine Submission

Quite like GSC, you need to add your sitemaps on Bing Webmaster Tools for submission. 

• Select ‘Sitemaps’ from the menu on the BM Tools page.
• Paste the site URL and click on ‘Submit.’ 
• Add only one URL per line to submit your pages.

Keep in mind

• Using the ‘Submit URL’ feature, it’s necessary to check the daily quota with every addition.
• This feature supports only the submission of root domain URLs with the exception of subdomains.

Bing URL Submission Plugin 

If WordPress powers your site, the Bing URL Submission plugin can prove convenient for you. With the free version of the feature, you can add your own API keys without concerning yourself with account activation. 

Upon configuration, the plugin will crawl in and detect any webpage or changes in it on your WordPress site. After identifying the page, it will automatically submit the URL to Bing. 

The robust back-end processes ensure that your site pages are optimized and stay on top of the ranking index. 

The plugin also allows: 

• Manual handling of the page submission by turning off the auto-add feature. 
• Downloadable list of submitted URLs using the plugin.
• Resubmission of the recently visited URLs.

Yahoo Submission

You don’t need to put any labour into your site submission on Yahoo. 

Interestingly, submitting your website on Bing automatically adds it to the Yahoo search engine as well. So, any indexing on Bing will automatically reflect on Yahoo. 

Baidu Search Engine Addition

If you’re targeting the Chinese market, Baidu optimization is a must in your marketing strategy. The platform allows submission only through Baidu Webmaster Tools in Chinese. 

Start with registering on the Baidu Webmaster tools. Different success messages will pop up on your screen based on the email used. You’re required to activate the account using the confirmation link sent to the email Id. 

After logging in to your account, head to the ‘Add a Site’ section, where you can insert the URL. After verifying your site ownership, the tool will submit your site to the search engine. 

Note: Keep in mind that the verification link will be active for only 48 hours

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo search engine doesn’t require manual site submission. The search engine automatically indexes its web pages without additional effort. In fact, it collaborates with more than 400 resources to index its sites, including Wikipedia, Bing, DuckDuckBot crawler, etc. 

So, if you’ve already optimized your content on other search engines, the chances of ranking high on DuckDuckGo are pretty good. 

Yandex

The Russia-based search engine is brilliant for sending traffic to pages in different countries as well. 

• Start by signing on to the Yandex Webmaster using Google, Twitter, or Facebook information. 
• Look for the ‘Site Address’ box and insert your website’s domain name. 
• The webmaster will generate a meta tag HTML. 
• Copy the information and add it to your website’s header. 

The users of the Yoast SEO plugin can paste the code into the special box assigned for Yandex. 

Qwant 

The search engine doesn’t require you to submit your site manually. Once your site goes live on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, Qwant browses the partner sources and extracts the information to index your website. 

However, if you still can’t see your webpage on the search engine, drop a query to the Qwant team to report the issue.

Are there any valuable tactics to ensure consistent indexing and crawling?

The recently submitted website takes some time to get indexed and rank higher in the search results. On the basis of the content quality, website interface, and SEO of the site, the rankings change and improve. However, you can utilize a few sneaky tricks to enhance spider bots’ activity on your website. 

Frequent sitemap submissions

While search engine automatically detects changes in the website, consistently updating the sitemaps can catapult the results. It’s all the more reason to incorporate if the site importance section has been improved or altered. Visit the Google Search Console segment to update the recent sitemaps in the URL inspection tool manually. 

Keep in consideration to submit the same URL only once for re-indexing. 

Update with top-notch content pages 

Every addition of engaging content attracts the crawlers to review and index. The more quality content your site has, the higher its potential to rank better. 

Ensure that your pages consist of both the long form and short form content with different niche-centric content to rate. 

Indulge in keyword optimization

To attract higher traffic to your website, you need to have interesting and value-centric content for your audience. Using on-page SEO, indexable search terms, and keyword optimization garner the much-required attention to your site and grow the number of visitors. 

Enlist your site in directories

Online business directories are the perfect portal for any new venture in the market. Consumers for new businesses refer to the listing on these pages. It not only improves the footfall online but also to your physical establishment if any exists. 

These directories act as the domain building authority due to the presence of top-ranking sites. Such a linkage to your business enhances its credibility and drives high-quality traffic. 

Exchange links with high-quality sites

Through guest posting and backlinks from top-notch websites in your niche, you can grow a community of loyal consumers. It also allows you to connect with the industry experts and leverage their followers base. 

Ensure that you connect and exchange links with only quality and high-ranking sites to avoid ranking degradation. In addition, your website hosting service must keep your site live at all times as the downtime can translate into lesser traffic and poorer revenue. 

Finally (Now you’re ready to submit your website!) 

With this insightful and comprehensive guide, submission of your business website will become a cakewalk. 

To put it succinctly, all you need to do is create your website with XML sitemaps and robots.txt files to register on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster. Half the job is done as soon as you add your respective sitemap on these platforms. The automatic updation of the partner sources facilitates easy indexing of your site. 

That said, keep upgrading your sitemaps as and when any site change occurs. In addition, maintain a healthy repository of backlinks to ensure the high-domain authority of your site and better ranking.

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