Google appeared on the search engine scene back in 1996, and ever since it has been providing us with amazing innovations. Google came out to be unique because it was the first search engine to rank pages according to citation notation, where a mention of a website on another site became a vote in that website’s favor.
Google covers more than 90% of the search market, according to recent research. This makes Google the ideal place for finding potential customers. As a website owner, excluding Google from your marketing strategy will definitely not be good idea. However, in order to get a rich amount of traffic on your website through Google, you will have to get on the search engine and learn how to submit URLs to Google.
Letting Google know about your website is the most important step to get on the well-renowned search engine, and the process is quite simple. But if not done right, it can cause you all sorts of issues. URL submission to Google is done through:
- Submitting XML sitemap or;
- Requesting a crawl through your Google Search Console account.
P.S. A lot of times people submit links to Google for indexing and still fail to get their website ranked on the search results. If you’ve encountered a similar issue, our professionals can optimize your site for Google. Get in touch with us online or call us to get started!
Why Should You Have Your Page Indexed?
The answer is quite simple: unless your web pages are not indexed on Google, they won’t appear on the search results. You can keep updating your site with new blog posts and articles that also match your audiences’ queries, but they won’t be able to see any of it if the indexing isn’t done.
No indexing means no improvement in traffic. Consequently, there will be a decreased site visibility.
How To Submit Your Site To Google?
Now that you’ve made your website live, you need to be able to find the pages on Google. Most new websites come across issues of indexing. Fortunately, this “issue” has straightforward solutions.
You’ll have to add your website to Google by registering and logging into your Google Search Console account. Once this is done, you have two ways to submit site URLs to Google:
- Using Sitemaps
- Requesting Crawl option
Using Sitemaps To Submit URLs To Google
The vast majority uses sitemaps to submit URLs to Google. Ever since the search console was introduced, Google has always encouraged webmasters to submit the sitemap to get better crawlability and indexability.
Generally, sitemap is created using three different formats:
1. XML Sitemaps
XML is one of the easiest and the most commonly used formats for creating a sitemap. It stands for Extended Markup Language. Note that you don’t need to get in touch with a professional to get this done. If you have a website made on WordPress, you will only have to install the Yoast SEO plugin.
Through the Yoast plugin, you’ll automatically have a smooth sitemap containing all the URLs you want Google to index.
However, if you’re still not comfortable with this approach, you can use any of the online sitemap generator tools, available for free, and create a sitemap for your site.
What will you have to do? Just upload the sitemap on your server, and that’s it.
2. Atom 1.0 Sitemaps, RSS, and mRSS
If you have a blogging website or any other site where you have to publish plenty of content every day, these 3 will be the best formats for you.
You can simply enable the RSS feeds on your website and submit the URL to the Search Console sitemap.
It’s important to note that Google prefers publishers to submit RSS feed URLs in the News Publisher Central. This is because the pages are indexed as soon as they are made live.
If you have a blogging website or any other site where you have to publish plenty of content every day, these 3 will be the best formats for you.
You can simply enable the RSS feeds on your website and submit the URL to the Search Console sitemap.
It’s important to note that Google prefers publishers to submit RSS feed URLs in the News Publisher Central. This is because the pages are indexed as soon as they are made live.
3. Plain Text Sitemaps
Although all the approaches are easy for indexing, but if we were to compete, this is by far the easiest way to submit your URLs to Google for indexing.
Create a .txt file for every URL you want to be indexed, but make sure you only add one URL per line. Once you’re done with all the URLs, submit them in the sitemap section of the Search Console.
Keep the following points in consideration when you create your Plain Text Sitemap:
- Use UTF-8 encoding when you save the file
- Make sure that the file has nothing other than the URLs
- The extension should be .txt, and there must be no constraints with the file name
- You must also have various types of Sitemap Extensions
Requesting Crawl Option For URL Submission
Google has always been very open and welcoming for the webmasters. This is mainly because the entire search works depending on the quality of the pages they are submitting to Google. Google provides another option apart from the Sitemaps, for you to submit the URLs – Requesting Crawl.
It must be clear that request crawl option is not an alternate option of Sitemaps. However, for those who seek quick indexing of the URL, this option of Google can be of great use.
Google Search Console has come a long way, with a rich profusion of updates coming every few months. In the earlier versions of Search Console, this Request Crawl option was called “Fetch as Google”, but in the latest versions, Google has made quite a few changes. The new Search Console provides reason why some pages failed to get indexed, allowing the option to fix the issue.
Now that you’re aware about several ways to submit site URLs to Google, let’s see how all of this is done:
Submitting URL To Google Search Console
Once you have new website up and ready, the best and most convenient way to give heads up to Google about your existence is by using the Search Console. This is by far the best URL submission tool you may have.
On that note, to make the best use of the Search Console, you’ll have to first verify your site by putting a code. This authoritarian code should be the first thing you do after you launch your site.
Steps For Submitting Bulk URLs With Google Search Console
Step1: Put your website on Google Search Console
Step2: Create a sitemap for your website (XML, RSS, or plain text)
Step 3: Add your sitemap to Google Search Console
Step 4: If there are any errors, fix them, and resubmit if need be
Submitting a New URL To Google
Imagine that you’re through with the task of submitting the sitemap on Google, most of your pages are indexed, and you’ve also published a new page that shows all time-bound information. You’re now waiting for the Google crawlers to immediately crawl and index the pages.
This is when you can leverage another very handy feature – The URL Inspection Tool, which is within the Search Console.
For those who have been using the Search Console since some years, they must have seen the “Submit URL” feature. However, with Google constantly bringing in updates, the search engine integrated this feature with the URL inspection tool.
This URL inspection tool allows you to verify if a particular URL has been indexed. Moreover, you also have the option to check for several other important things, which includes Schema improvements and URL indexability.
How To Submit Updated URL To Google?
There are chances that you might have to make some significant alterations to the content within a URL. You’d certainly want Google to show those changes ASAP. This is when this tool is again going to make your life easy. Simply click on the “Request Recrawl” option, and the updated version will be added to Google’s priority list.
Say Goodbye To Google URL Submit Tool! No More Bulk URL Submission To Google
As mentioned above, Google used to offer the “Submit a URL” option for all the users to allow faster indexing of websites and easy submission of URLs to the search console.
This “Submit URL” option was used mostly by webmasters, blog managers, and SEO executives who wanted to push pages of client websites to get them indexed quickly.
It was quite convenient since webmasters had the chance to save significant amount of time that would otherwise be spent asking clients about their search console details to submit URLs via “Fetch as Google’ option.
However, Google has put an end to this URL submit tool. It’s highly probable that Google detected webmasters using the service to add bulk URLs for indexing, which is why most experts believe it was discontinued.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that it’s a good practice to submit URLs to Google for indexing, but it should be kept in mind that it doesn’t guarantee good rankings on the search engine. Indexing websites and crawling are essential parts of the SEO process. This needs to be done, but if you want to ensure that your site ranks high on Google, you must also consider other vital factors like quality of content, site speed, and the keywords. If you formulate the right SEO strategy, your content will have greater chances of ranking well on Google.