Do you want to find a way to attract new clients and customers? Are you looking for a way to improve your online presence? If you want to do both, you need to have a stellar SEO plan on how to have your website show up in search engines. It’s estimated that 9,022,000,000 searches are performed on Google alone in a single day. Imagine how many searches are performed on every search engine. Luckily you can do both by doing one simple thing: Learn how to show up in search engines.
Websites don’t just appear in the top search engines people use. They need to be properly indexed and crawled before they can be ranked. Curious about how to get your business listed and use SEO to improve online visibility? Read on to learn more.
Where To Get Your Business Listed
Most people only use one search engine, but there are dozens that people can use every day when they want to search for something online. Getting your business listed with the major search engines shouldn’t cost you any money, but it can still be time-consuming.
Don’t waste your time submitting your site to search engines people rarely use. Stick to the most popular search engines. Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo are some of the most popular search engines, so, for now, we’re going focus how to show up in search engines on these three.
What You Need To Get Your Business Listed with the Major Search Engines
You may think that you need a lot to get your business listed in major search engines, but submitting your website isn’t difficult at all. All Google, Bing, and Yahoo will need from you is your website URL and a sitemap.
You just need to copy and paste your URL, but getting your sitemap is going to require a little more effort (but not much more). XML Sitemaps creator is accepted by every search engine you’ll want to be listed with, and it’s free and easy to use. When you go to the site, you’ll have the option to create a map of your website that’s easily scannable for bots and crawlers. It has the ability to do this for up to 500 pages for a website, so you be assured it can handle large websites. Once you have your sitemap, we can start submitting it to search engines for listing.
Getting Listed In Google, Yahoo, Or Bing
It isn’t difficult to get your business listed in any of the three search engines we listed.
It should be noted that you’ll need an email account associated with Yahoo or Google to submit to either engine. So be sure to have your login information ready before you start the process.
Submitting To Google
First, you need to log into the google account then go to your webmaster tools. Once you’re there, select the option to add a website. Then you can enter the URL you want to have listed.
Now it’s time to verify the website. In order to do this, you need to add some code to your website to verify it. You’ll have the option to verify your site late on, but you won’t be able to submit your sitemap until you do this step.
This sounds complicated, but it’s very easy to do. Google can tell you where you need to place the code. Once you do that, you can click verify and move to the next step.
Once you click “submit sitemap”, you’ll be allowed to enter the sitemap info. It’s usually something like www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.
After the sitemap has been submitted, you’ll get an email verification that your site is being indexed. Google will periodically crawl the site. So unless you make major changes, you don’t need to submit it more than once.
Submitting A Website To Bing And Yahoo
If you want to get your business listed on Bing, you don’t need to log in. You just need to go to the website submission page. Once you’re there, you just need to enter the URL of the website you want to be listed.
Submitting to Yahoo is nearly identical to submitting to Bing because they use the same submission platform.
Login to your Yahoo account, then go to search.yahoo.com. Once you’re there, look for the option to submit your website.
Once you select the option to submit your site, you’ll be redirected to Bing’s site submit page. When you’re there, you simply have to enter the URL you want to be crawled.
After you do a captcha verification, you’ll be good to go.
Tips For Improving SEO
If you want to learn how to get your business listed, you’ll be interested in how to climb search engine ranks with SEO and how to have your website show up in search engines.
Getting your business listed with the major search engines is only one way to improve your online visibility. The other way is to ensure that your website is properly SEO optimized.
Having an optimized website can ensure that you’ll climb to the top of search engine results. Crawlers and bots take SEO and proper site optimization seriously. When they see that your site is optimized, they’ll show it to more people.
A digital marketing agency or SEO expert can help you put together a stellar SEO and online marketing plan. But for now, follow these tips to boost your SEO.
Add Locations To Keywords
Location-based keywords make sense when you’re trying to improve online visibility. Unless you’re the owner of a large multinational business, you don’t need to worry about reaching hundreds of millions of people.
If you’re a small business owner, the vast majority of your business comes from people nearby. They may live in your town, city, or state, and they can easily be targeted by adding locations to keywords.
Trying to rank for the keyword “women’s shoes” would be nearly impossible. You’re competing against too many big retailers, your content would be pushed to the very end of the results page.
Adding a location to the keyword like “Orlando” or “Orlando FL” helps you target people more precisely. You’ll ensure that people in your location that already interested in what you sell can easily find you.
Internally Link Content
Having a solid navigation map isn’t the only way to help people get around your website. A few well-placed links can improve site navigation, and help improve SEO.
Site crawlers like internal links because it can improve the overall user experience. It also adds value to the links that are in the content because they’re viewed as authoritative pages.
Link to your contact page whenever you use the words contact us on the website. Post links to product and service pages when they’re mentioned in the content.
Edit Your Website Content
When was the last time you can remember adding something new to your website?
Businesses are constantly changing, and potential clients and customers need to know about news and deals. Keeping your content updated keeps them in the loop, and can help improve your ranking after you get your business listed.
Search engines prefer sites that update their content periodically. An active website is a website that people need, but a website that hasn’t been updated in years may not have relevant information.
Do you want to keep your site new a fresh, but can’t see yourself updating the pages often? Don’t worry, there’s an easy solution for that…
Write Blog Content
You don’t have to have weekly business news to keep content fresh on your website. Blogging is an easy way to add new pages to your sitemap, keep crawlers engaged, and find a new way to reach out to potential customers and clients.
Write about relevant industry news, how-to guides, tips, tricks, and whatever else you think your target customer base would like. The blog posts you write should utilize certain keywords to ensure that you get an extra SEO post. Use the keywords in the title and sprinkle them throughout the body copy.
Be sure to share your blog posts on any social media profiles you have for your business. It can help bring extra traffic to your website, and it help give you some extra backlinks.
Get Your Business Listed In Other Places
You know how to getting your business listed with the major search engines and indexed in search engines, but getting your business listed on other websites can be useful.
Having an up to date Google My Business profile can help ensure that customers and clients can find relevant business information like your website, hours, and contact information when they search you in Google.
Claiming your business page is simple. You can use it to post pictures of your business, gather customer reviews, and update important information. It can also give you the option to respond to customer reviews.
Don’t just stop with Google. Claim your profile on Yelp and see what other business directories you can submit your information to. You’ll be showing up in links all over the web, and search engines will have to take notice.
Wrapping Up How to Show Up in Search Engines
Now that you know how to get your business listed online, you’re on your way to having a great digital marketing plan.
When you’re happy with your website, consider investing in PPC so you can point people towards your newly optimized content. If you think that your website needs some work, look into hiring professionals to redesign it.
If you have any questions about how to have your website show up in search engines or want to continue to learn more about digital marketing, please follow me on Social Media and subscribe to the blog. Look forward to helping your business grow.