Having your website indexed by Google is essential for visibility and attracting organic traffic. One effective method to ensure your website’s presence on Google is by submitting a URL to the Google index using Google Search Console. In this post, we will guide you through the process step-by-step, ensuring that your website gets crawled and indexed efficiently.

Google Search Console is a powerful tool that enables website owners to monitor their site’s performance, identify issues, and interact with Google.

By submitting your URLs to the Google index, you can prompt Google’s bots to crawl and index your pages, making them visible in search results. This process is crucial for gaining visibility and driving organic traffic to your website.

Of course before getting started you’ll need to add your site to Google Search Console.

Submitting Individual URLs

To submit a specific URL for indexing, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to Google Search Console: Visit the Google Search Console website and sign in with your Google account.

2. Select your website: If you have multiple websites added to your Search Console account, choose the one that you want to submit a URL for. This is done on the top left of the sidebar.

3. Enter the URL: Type or paste the URL you want to submit into the inspection bar and press Enter. This is located at the top of Google Search Console.

Google Search Console inspect URL bar

4. Inspect the URL: Google Search Console will now inspect the URL and provide you with information about its indexing status.

5. Request indexing: If the URL is not indexed, you’ll see a message indicating that it’s not currently in the Google index. To submit it for indexing, click on the “Request Indexing” button.

Request Indexing button in Google Search Console

Please note that Google has a quota for submitting individual URLs, and submitting the same URL multiple times won’t expedite the crawling process. Be patient and monitor the progress using either the Index Status report or the URL Inspection tool.

Submitting a Sitemap

If you have a large number of URLs to submit or want to ensure that Google discovers all the pages on your website efficiently, submitting a sitemap is recommended.

Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Create a sitemap: Before submitting a sitemap, you need to create one. A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the URLs on your website. WordPress will do this automatically and can be found via the example.com/wp-sitemap.xml URL.
  2. Verify your website: If you haven’t already done so, verify your website ownership in Google Search Console.
  3. Access the Sitemaps report: In the left-hand sidebar of Google Search Console, click on “Sitemaps” under the “Index” section.
  4. Add your sitemap: Click on the “Add/Test Sitemap” button and enter the URL of your sitemap.
  5. Submit the sitemap: After adding your sitemap, click on the “Submit” button to inform Google about its existence.
  6. Monitor sitemap indexing: Google Search Console will now process your sitemap and provide valuable information about the indexed URLs.

Submitting a sitemap is especially useful when you’ve just launched your website or made significant updates to its structure. Additionally, sitemaps can include metadata about alternate language versions, video, image, or news-specific pages, enhancing the overall indexing process.

Conclusion

Submitting a URL to the Google index with Google Search Console is a crucial step in ensuring your website’s visibility and organic traffic. By following the steps outlined in this post, you can proactively prompt Google to crawl and index your website’s pages. If you have a WordPress website there are plenty of other tips you can do to improve SEO in WordPress.

Remember to be patient during the indexing process and monitor your site’s progress using the available tools in Google Search Console.