How to Submit your Website to Google
First things first
Why does this matter? Submitting your website to Google, allows Google to index your site in their search results more easily. Ultimately it says to Google “Hey guys I’m over here! Remember to crawl my website please!”
The good news, is that this is an extremely simple process.
According to Google, the “simplest way to submit your new and updates URLs is to verify your site ownership on Search Console”. Verifying your ownership is claiming that this property (or website) is yours.
Here are the steps you can take to verify any website with Google.
Prepping the Search Console
Navigate to Google Search Console
Once your arrive on this page, click “Start Now”.
Google will then prompt you to login to your Google account. A Google account is required to sign up for the Search Console. So if you don’t have a Google account yet, you can follow the steps to create a new account. It’s free!
Once you are logged in, you will see the Google Search Console dashboard.
Click “search property” in the top left and then “Add property” in the drop down menu
A window like this will pop up:
Verifying your ownership
Enter your domain on the left side. Note that once your site is indexed on the console, then you can add new URLs that are added to your site under to the URL prefix side.
Type in the domain you are adding. In my case this is laynealexandradesign.com
Now, you need to prove that you own this domain by adding a TXT record to your DNS settings. Don’t worry, it’s easier than you think! You will login to your domain provider (whatever it is for you), click on your domain, and then navigate to DNS settings.
On Squarespace, I will navigate to my home dashboard and then follow the the pathway: Settings > Domains > Click the domain I am managing > Advanced Settings
On this page at the bottom you will see this:
Adding your TXT record
After you enter your domain on the Google Search Console page, you will see a page like this:
Copy your verification code, and then go back to your domain provider DNS page you pulled up before
When you go to add a new record, there should be a drop down menu next to the “A”. Click that, and select TXT
Paste your verification code from google into the “Text” field. Like this:
Verify your record
Click “Add” and then “Save”
Once that is done, go back to your Google search console page and click “Verify” in the window
You should see a message like this one pop up:
If you do not see the message above, contact your domain provider (e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap) and see if they can help you enter your TXT record.
It may take a day or so, but once Google starts processing your data, you will be able to check out the performance of your site and inspect URLs for errors!
