How to get a website on google search

lucie707

Please forgive me if this isnt the right area to post this question!...

So I am in the process of setting up my own business, I have finished my website but it doesnt come up on google, even if you search the whole business name. I've had a website with vistaprint before and it appeared on google without me having to do anything.

Theres an option on my current website hosting to "upgrade search options" but the prices are pretty high and the descriptions seem pretty sketchy on what they include. A few people have told me i need google ad which i have half signed up for but again got confused if this is what i actually need. Its pay per click and i'm not sure if thats to appear right on the top of google search...i just want the site to be listed when consumers type in a few buzz words :undecided

Browntoa

Google change the rules all the time about how sites get listed higher than others

List your website anywhere that allows it without spamming

Adsense can be abused by unscrupulous rivals to eat up your budget in no time at all by employing people to click through

If it's a specialised site see if you can list it on a related forum or web site

[Deleted User]

This is the page to start with : http://www.google.co.uk/submit_content.html

Click 'submit URL' on the right

RockPaperScissors

There are two types of search that appear on Google (when you enter the buzzwords you talk about). One is Paid Search (Google adwords - you literally pay per click on your site according to the keywords you want i.e. jewellery shop). The second is Natural/Organic Search - this is where your site appears in the natural listings when you type in your keyword.

The paid ads are the ones at the very top and along the right hand side of the screen when you've searched for your site (they don't appear on every search - just the ones people are paying to be seen on) and they usually have a little yellow "Ad" logo to the left of them. Try googling "dresses" and you should see what I mean. The organic/natural listings are all of the rest that appear below the ads.

Getting your page to rank in either of these sections requires a certain element of skill (please don't be tempted to use a cheap online chinese service to help you!)

This guide is a good intro to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation = natural/organic search) http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

It's very comprehensive but there may be a couple of sections that need updating as Google's algorithm changes frequently!

RockPaperScissors

Also... who have you set your site up with? A lot of the easy website builders deliberately add a little bit of code (noindex or nofollow) that tells Google NOT to find your website.. JUST so they cna then charge you more money later to remove that bit of code!

Dirty Tactics

You may be able to find this yourself... go to your site and right click anywhere on the page and select "view page source"... then use Ctrl + F and look for nofollow and noindex.

fenlander_uk

The absolute basics:
Ensure that your home page includes a title and these meta tags:

<title>your title</title>
<meta name="description" content="your description of site" />
<meta name="keywords" content="list of keywords, separated by commas" />

In the root folder of the site (where the index.xxx file is), include a file called 'robots.txt' containing the following:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

This makes your whole site available to indexers. If you want to fine tune this, just google 'robots.txt' for more information. For more info generally on this topic, google 'seo'.

If, by any chance, your site uses Wordpress, check under Settings-Reading that the option to 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' is NOT checked.

BTW: if your hosting provider really does insert lines in your pages to discourage indexers, change your provider.

RockPaperScissors

lucie707 wrote: »

Theres an option on my current website hosting to "upgrade search options" but the prices are pretty high and the descriptions seem pretty sketchy on what they include.

fenlander_uk - This is exactly what was displayed in my SIL's website - she set this up with one of the website builder companies (such as 1&1) in which case Lucie may unfortunately not have any control over titles and meta descriptions/robots.txt/sitemaps etc.

If that's the case then yes a new host is certainly needed if you want to stand the best chance of being found via search engines (But I realise from your first post that it may all be a bit unfamiliar in which case fenlander's post may not make much sense )

Take a read of the guide above and let us know who your host is

lucie707

Oh dear I have a feeling I've chosen a provider that does block google so they can change me to add it my provider is https://www.names.co.uk. I will check out the above links thanks so much for all your help.