When will my website be found on Google?

The first time I  uploaded a blog to the internet I hit publish then immediately opened a new Google tab, typed in the subject and waited for the post to come up. It didn’t. I tried again and again and, well let’s just say it was an important early lesson in SEO.

I’d poured everything I had into that blog and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t showing up. Not on Day 1, Week 1 or even Month 1. I put the link on a Facebook page and finally started to get views. But I knew I didn’t want to rely on Social Media, that I wanted my blogs to come up in internet searches and this meant I needed to learn about SEO.

At the same time I started to build websites for small businesses and I understood that the best way I could serve them, wasn’t just to build a fancy looking website; it was to build a website which would get chosen by search engines time and again. Chosen above their competitors and bring in the types of enquiries which would lead to making sales.

What came next is almost a decade of learning about SEO, Accessibility, User Journeys, Calls to Action, algorithms and design trends. My websites started to not only get found, but hold the #1 ranking in their category on Google. Blog posts from years ago are still getting hits and offered in search results and, most importantly, clients continually let me know that they have a steady stream of leads coming through their websites.

When you hit publish, whether it’s on a website or an individual blog post, it won’t then be found on search engines straight away. This is because it takes time for indexing to take place. Indexing is where the search bots crawl website pages, decide the relevance of the content, alongside whether the SEO is structured properly and then index it in search results.

You can help indexing to be done more quickly by using an SEO plugin like Yoast, RankMath or All In One SEO. You can also submit the URL directly to your Google Search Console.

I mentioned Google Search Console above. This is the most important part of getting your website found - setup a Google My Business profile - it’s free - which tells Google your website exists in the first place. Then link it to your Google Console. As Google starts to index your website, the console will monitor where your traffic is coming from, what key terms people are searching for and the demographics of your audience.

*if you setup a Console account you will need to put a cookies consent notice on your website to tell people that traffic is being monitored by Google.

This is where free website builders really let people down. ‘Build a website yourself! We have all the tools! Ditch the designer!’ They all shout in their advertising. But what they fail to tell you is what the difference between H1 and H2 is. Why it matters to search engines. How to structure your content for search engines or where to place your Calls to Action and how.

They don’t tell you that if clickable elements like links and buttons are too close together, it will stop it working on the page and Google won’t index that website page as it has errors on it.

Website copy is something which almost always should be handled by a copywriter but, in some cases, someone may feel they are the only ones who can write about their particular product or service.

The best way to handle this is to whatever you’re writing into pages and then sections (or skip straight to sections if it’s a blog post). The Header of each page should use a H1 Title. This should describe the page (we usually use these in page title bars). For every new section you should use a H2 to clearly let people know what that section is about, before going into body text.

When writing the content, make sure you’re identifying and solving peoples’ problems, rather than just writing about your product or service. People want to feel you’ve got a handle on the issues they’re having rather than the ins and outs of what you do and how you deliver it.

If you don’t tell people what to do on your website then they won’t do it. A page which is just text and images without any buttons or clickable links won’t get interactions from your audience as:

1. They can’t click on anything
2. They don’t know you want them to

As a rule of thumb, include a Call to Action every second container on a page. This may be ‘get in touch’ or ‘request a quote’ or ‘book a call’. Whatever works for you and your audience and is relevant to the copy on the page.

The more search engines notice people interacting on your website pages, the higher they’re going to index them in search results.

If you’re writing a blog the Calls to Action may be ‘get in touch’, ‘leave a comment’, ‘subscribe to my newsletter’.

Have you ever been on a website where it’s almost impossible to read the copy because the text is too light? Or colours have been layered and there’s not enough contrast between them? This, amongst other things, is known as accessibility.

Accessibility isn’t just about the colour contrasts on a website, it also looks at font sizes, whether fonts are easy to read, the alignment of text (text should be left aligned as it’s easier for people with dyslexia to read), whether images are the right sizes for the containers they’re in, whether they have the right labels and alt text. Buttons need to have ARIA attributes if they’re not opening links, link structure in menu drop downs need to be observed…… etc.

If your website doesn’t meet Website Accessibility Guideline Standards, then it’s unlikely to be indexed highly in search results.

Imagine your website to be like a house. You finish decorating one room and something in the bathroom springs a leak. You fix that then the oven blows up. Once that’s sorted the carpets need replacing…. You get the picture.

Hopefully your website won’t do the equivalent of springing a leak or blowing up, but it’s not enough to build a website and then forget about it for a couple of years. As your online home, your website will be representing you day and night, whether you’re working or asleep, or out having a good time. Just as things fluctuate with life and work, they will with how you come across online. You may want to change a passage of text or update your images, rename your offers or amend your pricing. Make sure you know how to do this and review your website regularly so it’s always the best representation of you, as well as letting Google know that you’re still on it and your website is relevant and worthy of being in the search results.

Search Engine Optimisation is one of the reasons I don’t recommend people building a website themselves and, when they do, why those websites don’t go on to bring in leads or make sales. If you have a website which isn’t performing well and think the SEO could be the cause, check out my Unlocking SEO course which will walk you through the tools to get your website seen online.