How to submit website to Google and Bing

Search engines are a great way to get your content seen and possibly getting revenue from this boost in traffic. Even if you have incredible content, don't anticipate after publishing that search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo will immediately be popping up in the search results.

Manually Submitting to Search Engines

Search engines have specialized software that "crawls" through different sites and examines their content to index. As a site owner, manually submitting your content to Google will boost the likelihood of your content being examined faster.

This is an optional step for website developers as the majority of search engine crawlers will end up finding the content. The majority of website developers face complications more so with search engine spiders not being able to access all the pages on a website after they arrive.

Manually submitting a website to search engines is recommended for the following:

If you have a brand new website, URL, or subdomain
If you have recently updated your website, submitting your new URL and just wait for the search engine crawl
Incomplete indexing

How Google Search Engines Find Your Website

Google's specific crawler, also known as a GoogleBot begins with a list of website URLs that it needs to crawl to. The Google search console reviews pages and has specific site mapping data that enables the spider to "crawl" sites and examine them for new sites, existing page updates, or broken links.

Google in particular, evaluates websites based on over 200 criteria. After the crawl and evaluation process of different websites, Google evaluates the validity and quality of websites therefore adjusting the ranking of different websites.

Other information website developers include gaining exposure include tags, meta descriptions, and more.

Any unique methods in gaining SEO can sometimes be misread or misunderstood by search engine spiders. Manually submitting the URL to a website domain is the best way to ensure accuracy and frequency.

How to Submit Your Website to Google

To submit a website to Google, there are 2 common methods: adding an updated site map to your Google Account or submitting a specific request for Google to index your website.

For brand new pages, going through the Google Search Console and going to the "submitting a site map" option verifies that you own that domain and increases the chance of getting crawled and indexed sooner.

Submit an Updated Sitemap

Login to Google Search Console (https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/webmasters/)
On the top left side Choose the "Add a property" button
Select Property Type (in my case URL prefix) and type the domain name you wish to add to google (make sure you include http or https. e.g: https://domain.com)
On the next step, Google will ask to verify ownership. The easy way to do it is by Downloading the HTML file given by Google and upload it to /public_html folder (DO NOT MODIFY THE FILE NAME, If you do so Google will fail to locate it.)
Once the file has been uploaded to /public_html click VERIFY, Google will try to locate the HTML file you just uploaded to /public_html.
To verify If the website is on Google, go to Google.com and type site:domain.com (change domain.com) to the domain you added to Google.

Submit a Request

Log into the Google Search Console
Select the Crawl tab on the lefthand sidebar and click the Fetch as Google subcategory
This pulls up a table to enter any URLs that you want to be reviewed. Google keeps track of the status of any crawling
Insert the URL of the website or page you want to be indexed and if its eligible, Google will show you a "Request Indexing" option

How to Submit Your Website to Bing

Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools (https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster), if you do not have an account, it is suggested that you make one. If you already have a Google Search Console account, Bing can use that as verification
Select the website you want to be indexed or add a new website domain by choosing Add a Site from the left menu
Type in or paste the appropriate URL and sitemap (If you don't have a sitemap leave it empty)
Press ADD
Download BingSiteAuth.xml (DO NOT MODIFY THE FILE NAME, If you do so Bing will fail to locate it.)
Upload the file to http://yourdomain.com/BingSiteAuth.xml
Confirm successful upload by visiting http://anawithonen.com/BingSiteAuth.xml in your browser
Click the VERIFY button below