How to get your website indexed on Google

Your site is live, but when you search for it on Google, nothing comes up, or only your home page. Here is how to get your website indexed on Google: tell Google your site exists, remove whatever stops Google reading it, and give every page links Google can follow. If you skip this, one setting left on from building your site can keep every page off Google, and every page you write is wasted.

Do these three things

About 1 hour today, then 10 minutes a day on top of your daily page. Google says crawling takes a few days to a few weeks, so judge it at week 2: your home page and 12 of your first 14 new pages should be on Google.

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1. 1Today: add your site to Google Search Console, turn off anything that hides it from Google, submit your sitemap, and ask Google to index your 5 main pages.
2. 2Every day: publish 1 new page, found with your keyword list, link to it from 3 of your pages that Google already has, and click "Request indexing" for it.
3. 3Every Sunday: check last week's 7 new pages in URL Inspection, and fix every one that is not "on Google" using the reason Search Console gives.

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1. Add your website to Google Search Console

To get your website indexed on Google, first add it to Google Search Console, Google's free tool that shows which of your pages are in Google's index and lets you ask it to add more. Google finds most sites on its own, but without Search Console you cannot see what it found or why a page is missing.

1. Open Search Console and sign in with the Google account you will keep using for the business, not a personal one you might lose.
2. Click "+ Add property" and choose Domain. Type your domain on its own, such as yourdomain.com, with no https and no www.
3. Google shows you a TXT record, a line of text that proves you own the domain. Copy it into the DNS settings where you bought your domain, then click Verify. If it fails, wait an hour and click Verify again.

A Domain property covers every version of your address: www and non-www, http and https. Google's John Mueller said in July 2026 that a Domain property makes these versions "a little bit easier" to read in the reports. If you cannot edit your DNS, choose URL prefix instead, type your address exactly as it opens in your browser, and use the HTML tag method.

Some site builders do this for you. On Wix, open the SEO Setup Checklist and click "Connect to Google"; it needs a Premium plan and your own domain, and it also submits your sitemap. On Squarespace, go to Settings, then Connected Accounts, then Google Search Console.

While you are signed in, take 2 more minutes to open Bing Webmaster Tools, which is also free, and import your site from Google Search Console. Bing then gets your sitemap too, and its AI Performance report shows when Microsoft Copilot cites your pages, one way to track AI mentions. What the rest of Search Console does is in the full guide to using Google Search Console.

• Tool: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both free.
• Time: 15 minutes, plus any wait for your DNS.
• You will have: your site verified in Search Console as a Domain property, and imported into Bing.
• It worked if: you can paste your home page into the search bar at the top of Search Console and get a result, not an error that you do not own the property.
• Common mistake: adding only the www address as a URL prefix. Search Console then shows nothing for the other versions of your address, and you think Google has nothing.

2. Remove anything that stops Google from indexing your site

If your site is missing from Google, first look for a setting left on from when the site was built, because one setting can hide every page. One live test in Search Console shows you every blocker at once.

Paste your home page into the search bar at the top of Search Console. This is URL Inspection. Click "Test live URL", wait for the result, then read these four things:

Then fix what the test found:

• The "hide from search" switch. On WordPress, go to Settings, then Reading, and untick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". On Wix, go to SEO & GEO, then Tools and settings, then SEO Settings, and turn on "Let search engines index your site". On Squarespace, go to Settings, then Crawlers, and untick "Block Search engine crawlers". Any one of these hides every page you have.
• robots.txt. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. If you see "Disallow: /" under "User-agent: *", "User-agent: Googlebot" or "User-agent: OAI-SearchBot", delete that line. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". Blocking private areas such as /admin or /app is fine.
• noindex. Open your page, view its source, and search for "noindex". Google's words: "If you want this page to be indexed, you must remove the tag or HTTP header." Do not also block that page in robots.txt: Google has to read the page to see the tag is gone.
• Bot protection. In July 2026, Mueller warned that bot protection on some hosts and CDNs can show Google an error, or an "Are you a bot or not?" page, which "basically just ruins your SEO". If Page fetch fails, or the screenshot shows a bot check, turn off the rule that challenges bots, or ask your host to let Googlebot through.

Run the same live test on your 4 other main pages: what you sell, pricing, about and contact. The full list of deeper checks, such as speed, redirects and mobile, is in the technical SEO checklist.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /app/Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml(Keep only the Disallow lines for private areas you really have. Never "Disallow: /" on its own.)

If you run a D2C store on Shopify: a store with a password is hidden: Shopify says "all of your online store's pages are hidden from visitors and search engines". Go to Online Store, click Private, choose Public, then Update (the first time it says "Launch store"). Do it as soon as you can take your first orders. Shopify also says "Search engines don't index trial stores", so pick a plan before you expect Google to list you. The rest is in SEO for a Shopify store.

If you run a SaaS: if you built your site with an AI app builder or as a React app, the screenshot is the test that matters. Google says server-side rendering or pre-rendering "is still a great idea" because "not all bots can run JavaScript". Lovable switched new apps to server-side rendering on 13 May 2026; other builders differ, so check yours. Your login and app pages can stay noindex; your marketing pages cannot. If the screenshot is empty, switch your marketing pages to server-side rendering or pre-rendering before you publish anything else; for a technical founder, this comes before any new feature.

If you run an agency: run this test on every client site in your first week, before you promise any SEO results. It is also an easy way to sell SEO work to web design clients. A "Discourage search engines" box left ticked from the build keeps a whole WordPress site off Google, and fixing it on day one is a first win to show in your first client report.

• Tool: URL Inspection in Search Console, your site builder's settings, and your robots.txt file.
• Time: 30 minutes.
• You will have: a live test on your 5 main pages with no blockers.
• It worked if: all 5 pages show "Crawl allowed? Yes", "Page fetch: Successful", "Indexing allowed? Yes", and your own words in the screenshot.
• Common mistake: a "Disallow: /", a noindex tag or a store password left on after launch. Any one of them keeps your whole site off Google, however good the pages are.

3. Submit your sitemap and request indexing for your main pages

Submit your sitemap so Google gets a list of every page, then ask Google to index your 5 main pages one by one. The sitemap covers the whole site; the requests put your most important pages first.

The sitemap. Open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in your browser. Most site builders make it for you, and you should see a list of your page addresses. In Search Console, open the Sitemaps report, paste the address into "Add a new sitemap" and click Submit. Also add a "Sitemap:" line to your robots.txt (the template in step 2), which Google also reads. Google calls a sitemap "merely a hint", so it helps Google find pages but does not make it index them.

The requests. Paste each of your 5 main pages into URL Inspection and click "Request indexing": home, what you sell, pricing, about and contact. You must be an owner or full user of the property. Google says there is a daily limit on these requests, and "requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL won't get it crawled any faster." It also says "Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks."

You may read that you should "ping" Google with your sitemap. Google turned that off at the end of 2023, so pings now do nothing. Submitting in Search Console and the robots.txt line are the two ways that work.

• Tool: Google Search Console. Free.
• Time: 15 minutes.
• You will have: a submitted sitemap and 5 indexing requests.
• It worked if: the Sitemaps report shows "Success" and a "Discovered pages" number close to how many pages you have. Within 2 weeks, URL Inspection shows your home page as "URL is on Google".
• Common mistake: clicking "Request indexing" on the same page every day. It uses up your daily limit and does not help.

4. Link to every page from your own site and from outside it

Google's crawler finds most pages by following links, so every page you want on Google needs a link from at least one other page on your site, and your site needs a few links from other sites. Google's words: "Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site."

Inside your site. Copy every page address from your sitemap into a sheet. For each page, write which of your pages link to it. Then fix the gaps:

• Your home page links to every main page, in the menu or the footer.
• Every article or product page gets links from at least 3 related pages. Put the link on words that say what the page is about, which is its anchor text, not "click here".
• Use normal links. Google reads links written as a link in the page's code. A page you can only reach through a search box or a button that runs code has no link Google can follow.

Let AI do the matching. Paste your page list into ChatGPT or Claude and ask which 3 pages should link to each page, and with which words. You check each suggestion and add the links yourself.

Outside your site. Add 5 first links from places you already control: your LinkedIn company page, your X bio, your founder profile on a site such as Indie Hackers or Product Hunt, your GitHub page if you have one, and a Google Business Profile if customers visit you, which also puts you on Google Maps. In July 2026, one founder had hundreds of pages sitting unindexed for 6 weeks. They linked every page from 2 to 3 others, added their first profile links and resubmitted their sitemap, and about 800 more pages were indexed that week. They say they cannot tell which change did it, so do all of them. Backlinks that help you rank, not only get found, are in getting backlinks for a new website, and SaaS directories add a few more.

Page | Links in from (your pages) | How many | Outside links | On Google? (URL Inspection)
/ (home) | menu, footer | all | LinkedIn, X, [profile] | yes / no
/[main page] | home menu, /[page], /[page] | 3 | | yes / no
/[article] | /[page], /[page], /[page] | 3 | | yes / no
Rule: every row has 1 or more links in. Every article and product page has 3.

• Tool: Google Sheets, your site editor, and ChatGPT or Claude to suggest links.
• Time: 1 hour once, for a site of up to about 50 pages.
• You will have: a sheet where every page has at least 1 link in, and 5 outside links to your site.
• It worked if: no row in the sheet has 0 links in, and all 5 outside links are live and point to your site.
• Common mistake: pages that are only in the sitemap, with no link from any other page. Google knows they exist but has no reason to visit them soon.

5. Send every new page to Google the day you publish it

Every day you publish a new page, link to it from 3 of your older pages and ask Google to index it, so Google has two ways to find it on day one. This takes 10 minutes on top of writing the page, and fits in the daily marketing block you already have.

Aim for 1 page a day, each answering one search your buyer makes, such as an alternative page for a tool they compare you with. The keyword list gives you the topic, writing a blog post that ranks covers the writing, and how long SEO takes explains why 1 a day. Let AI draft each page; you add one thing only you know, such as a real price, a photo of your work, or a number from your own customers. That is what using AI for content looks like when Google still wants to index it.

When a page is live, do these four things:

1. Link to it from 3 older pages that URL Inspection already shows as "URL is on Google". Add a row to your link sheet.
2. Request indexing for it in URL Inspection.
3. Check it is in your sitemap. Most builders add new pages on their own; look once, then trust it.
4. Share it once where it answers a real question, the way you get traffic to a new website: in one of your 20 daily answers in the places your buyers ask for help, or in a post. On Reddit, read how to post without getting banned first. Each share is also a link Google can follow.

Google limits "Request indexing" to a daily number it does not publish. At 1 page a day you will not reach it. If you publish or update many pages in one day, request only the most important ones; the sitemap and your internal links carry the rest.

Quality decides how much Google indexes. In July 2026, Mueller said that when Google's systems "are seriously worried about the quality of a website", they "reduce the number of pages that they index". He named AI pages where readers think "Anyone could have written this", and added: "That's not to say that all AI-generated content is bad." Google's spam rules also count many pages made only to rank as spam. One useful page a day is not that; 50 look-alike pages in a day is.

If you run a D2C store: each new product goes into a collection and gets a link from your home page or a related product. Then add it to free Google Shopping listings, which is a separate way for shoppers to find it. Write each product page in your own words, as in product descriptions that sell. When a new store's pages stayed out in May 2026, the Shopify Community replies said the same: unique descriptions and links from home to collections to products.

If you run a B2B company: a case study page for each client, named by the client's kind of business, is a page only you can write. Link it from the page for the service it shows.

• Tool: your site editor, Google Search Console, and ChatGPT or Claude to draft.
• Time: 10 minutes a page on top of writing it.
• You will have: 7 new pages a week, each with 3 links in, an indexing request and one share. Plan the next 7 every Sunday in a content calendar.
• It worked if: at week 2, your home page and at least 12 of your first 14 new pages show "URL is on Google".
• Common mistake: publishing a batch of near-identical AI pages, such as one page per city with only the city name changed. Pages made only to rank count as spam under Google's rules, and Mueller said quality doubts make Google index less of the whole site.

6. Fix pages Google has discovered or crawled but not indexed

Every Sunday, check the pages you published last week in URL Inspection, and for each one that says "URL is not on Google", do what its reason says in the table below. Give a page 2 weeks after its request before you treat "not on Google" as a problem.

For each page, URL Inspection shows the reason under Page indexing. To see all your pages at once, open the Page indexing report, choose "All submitted pages" in the filter above the chart, and read the "Why pages aren't indexed" table. Google says a site with fewer than 500 pages probably does not need this report; URL Inspection on each new page is enough.

Making a page better for "Crawled - currently not indexed": answer the page's one question in its first two lines, add something only you know, and merge it into a stronger page if two of your pages say the same thing. How to do that well is in making an article rank higher.

Use "Validate Fix" only for real technical fixes, such as a server error or a blocked page. Google says validation "typically takes up to about two weeks". Mueller said that when the sample passes, Google will "in most cases" recrawl the other pages faster.

Do not try to index every address. Google says "You should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed, only the canonical pages." Google's Martin Splitt added in July 2026 that the share of pages indexed "doesn't matter". What matters is that every page you care about is on Google. The report can also run late: in June 2026 its data was 18 days old. For a single page, trust URL Inspection.

If most of your pages are "Discovered" or "Crawled", and step 2 found nothing, the problem is quality, not settings. Stop adding new pages for a week, rewrite your 10 best pages with the steps above, and link to them from your home page. Then go back to 1 page a day.

Week of: [date]
Page | Published | Indexing requested | Status in URL Inspection | Reason (if not on Google) | What I changed
/[page] | [date] | yes | URL is on Google | |
/[page] | [date] | yes | URL is not on Google | Discovered - currently not indexed | Added links from /[page], /[page], /[page]
Pages on Google: __ of __. Pages older than 2 weeks and still not on Google: __.

• Tool: URL Inspection and the Page indexing report in Search Console, and Google Sheets.
• Time: 20 minutes every Sunday.
• You will have: one row per page, with its status and the change for each page that is not on Google.
• It worked if: every page older than 2 weeks is either "URL is on Google" or has a reason and a change written down.
• Common mistake: treating every grey row as an error to fix. Redirects, 404s for deleted pages and pages you meant to hide are working as they should.

Where Scout7 helps

Scout7 does parts of steps 2, 3, 5 and 6.

Step 2. Scout7's search and AI audit crawls your site and gives you a list of page-level issues, sorted by how serious they are. It also checks your robots.txt, llms.txt and structured data. You still make the fixes on your own site: it does not edit a site it does not host.

Steps 3 and 5. If you write your articles in Content Co-Pilot, Scout7 can host the blog under your own domain at /content, and it makes the sitemap.xml and robots.txt for it, so crawlers read the blog as part of your site. You point your CDN to it once. You approve every article; nothing is published without your approval.

Step 6. Once you connect your own Google Search Console, Scout7 shows real impressions, clicks and positions next to its audit, so you can see which of your indexed pages Google shows people.

Your indexing checklist for the next 2 weeks

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Step 1 · Add your website to Google Search Console

• Add your site to Google Search Console as a Domain property, or a URL prefix if you cannot edit DNS.
• Import your site into Bing Webmaster Tools from Search Console.

Step 2 · Remove anything that stops Google

• Turn off any hide-from-search setting or store password, and remove any Disallow: / from robots.txt.
• Run Test live URL on your 5 main pages and fix anything that fails.

Step 3 · Submit your sitemap and request indexing

• Submit your sitemap in Search Console and add a Sitemap line to robots.txt.
• Request indexing for your 5 main pages.

Step 4 · Link to every page

• Make a link sheet and add links so every page has at least 1 link in, and every article has 3.
• Add 5 links to your site from your LinkedIn page, X bio and other profiles you control.

Step 5 · Send every new page to Google

• Every dayPublish 1 new page, link to it from 3 older pages, and request indexing.
• Every dayShare today's page once in an answer or a post.

Step 6 · Fix pages that are not indexed

• Every SundayCheck last week's 7 pages in URL Inspection and fix each one by the table.
• At week 2Check the week-2 pass line: your home page and 12 of your first 14 pages on Google.

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