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If search engines dont know your website exists, your chance of ranking isnt an improbability; its an impossibility. But do you still need to submit your website to search engines in 2021?
Heres what youll learn in this guide:
Probably not, but it can help them discover it faster.
Google and other search engines dont rely on manual submissions. Their primary way of finding new websites and pages is crawling. Thats where computer programs continually re-check known websites for new links to new content. Any useful content they find gets added to their index.
SIDENOTE.
Matt Cutts explains more about crawling and how it works in this video.In summary, search engines will probably find your website on their own.
But there are a few benefits to submitting:
- Better safe than sorry. Its quick to submit your website, so why risk search engines not finding it?
- Give them more information. Keep search engines updated about changes to your content.
- Improve your website. Submitting your website to Google and Bing gives you access to free tools to help improve your website.
Google and Bing both discontinued their URL submission tools in 2018. Now the only way to submit your website to these search engines is to submit your sitemap. For other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, theres no need to submit your website.
You can usually find your sitemap at one of these URLs:
yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml
If you cant see your sitemap there, check your robots.txt file at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. Most websites list the location of their sitemap here.
If youre still having no luck, chances are you dont have a sitemap. Youll need to create one before continuing.
Now thats out of the way…
Here are the official ways to submit your website to search engines:
How to submit your website to Google
Log in to Google Search Console, hit “Sitemaps†on the left menu, paste in your sitemap URL, then hit submit.
SIDENOTE.
Youll need to have added and verified your website in Google Search Console to do this. Follow this tutorial first if you havent done that.If you have multiple sitemaps, repeat this process.
Recommended reading: How to Submit Your Website to Google in 2021
JUST WANT TO SUBMIT AN INDIVIDUAL PAGE TO GOOGLE?
Paste the full URL into the Search Consoles URL Inspection tool.
If the page isnt indexed, youll see the “URL is not on Google†warning. Hit “Request indexing†to ask Google to crawl and index the page.
If the page is indexed, youll see the “URL is on Google†confirmation.
If the URL is on Google, you dont need to do anything. However, its good practice to request reindexing after updating and republishing content as it may help Google to recrawl and reindex the page faster.
How to submit your website to Bing
Log in to Bing Webmaster Tools, select Sitemaps on the left menu, paste in your sitemap URL, then hit Submit sitemap.â€
If you have multiple sitemaps, repeat the process.
How to submit your website to Yahoo
Bings index powers Yahoo. By submitting to Bing, you will automatically submit your site to Yahoo. So theres nothing to do here.
How to submit your website to DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo doesnt allow website submissions. They discover and index websites from over four hundred sources, including DuckDuckBot (their web crawler), Wikipedia, Bing, and other partners.
Theres nothing you need to do here other than submit your website to Bing.
How to submit your website to Baidu
You only need to submit to Baidu if your website targets people in China, where Baidu has a 66%+ market share. Because the process is quite convoluted, we wont discuss it here. But heres an excellent guide to Baidu submission in case you need it.
