How to Get Your WordPress Site Listed on Google easily

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get your WordPress site listed on Google and reach a wider audience?  

With over 8.5 billion searches happening daily, Google is where most people go to find information. If your WordPress site isn’t appearing in search results, you miss countless opportunities to connect with potential visitors.  

Getting your WordPress site listed on Google is not as complicated. From optimizing your content for search engines to using Google’s tools like Search Console, there are actionable steps you can take to ensure your website is indexed and discoverable.

In this article, you will learn how to get your WordPress site listed on Google. We will cover various strategies to ensure your site is found, crawled, indexed, and listed by Google.

Importance of Listing WordPress Website on Google

Listing your website on Google is crucial for achieving online visibility and reaching your target audience. 

Here’s why getting your site listed matters:  

Increase Visibility: If your website is not on Google, potential visitors searching for your services or content won’t find you. Being listed ensures your site can appear in search results, making it accessible to users worldwide.  

Drive Organic Traffic: Google is a powerful source of free, organic traffic. You can attract visitors by being listed and optimizing your site for relevant keywords.  

Build Credibility and Trust: Appearing on Google establishes credibility for your website. Users are more likely to trust and engage with indexed and visible sites in search results.  

Stay Competitive: Most businesses and organizations aim to be listed on Google. If you’re not there, you risk falling behind competitors taking advantage of this essential channel.

Unlock Growth Opportunities: Being listed on Google allows your site to benefit from additional tools and insights, such as Google Analytics and Search Console. These resources can help you track performance, optimize content, and enhance your site’s overall user experience.

Getting Your WordPress Site Listed on Google 

First, create a Google Search Console account. This tool helps you manage your site’s presence on Google. It allows you to monitor how Google indexes and interacts with your site, giving you valuable insights and control.

Next, ensure your WordPress site is fully designed and ready to launch. This means having optimized content, functional navigation, and properly set-up pages.

Whether you have a small business website or a blog, ensuring your site is in order will help you proceed smoothly with the next steps.

Once everything is ready, it’s time to begin the process.

Check WordPress Search Engine Visibility

WordPress has a setting that can prevent search engines from indexing your website. This setting, if enabled, creates an invisible barrier blocking Google’s search bots from discovering your content.

To ensure the setting is not enabled, log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to the Settings > Reading section. You’ll find a “Search Engine Visibility” checkbox that controls your site’s discoverability there.

Ensure the checkbox is ‘UNCHECKED’ and save your changes.

This simple action signals to search engines that they can crawl and index your website, opening the pathway for potential visibility in search results.

Connecting Your Website to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful, free SEO tool designed to help website owners enhance their online presence. By providing detailed insights into search performance, this platform enables webmasters to understand how their sites appear in Google search results.

The primary benefits of using Google Search Console include performance monitoring, indexing management, and technical optimization. Website owners can track their search rankings, identify potential issues, and ensure content is indexed.

To connect your WordPress website to Google Search Console, we recommend using the CrawlWP SEO plugin.

To begin, log in to the Google Search Console website. Then, under the search dropdown menu, click on ‘Add a property.’

Next, choose the type of property.

Selecting the right property type in Google Search Console is crucial for effective website tracking. You have two main options: Domain and URL Prefix.

The Domain option provides coverage across all subdomains and protocols (http, https), offering maximum flexibility. However, it requires DNS verification, which can be more technically challenging.

The URL Prefix option covers URLs that start with a specified prefix.

We’ll be using the URL prefix option in this example. Enter your full website address, including the forward slash “/” at the end. For instance, if your site is “https://yourdomain.com/“, that’s precisely what you need to enter.

Click “Continue” to proceed. On the next page, select “HTML tag” as the verification method for your account.

Google will give you an HTML meta tag. Copy this tag. 

Next, in your WordPress dashboard, navigate to CrawlWP >> Settings >> Core >> Site Verification. Paste the tag you copied into the “Google Verification Code” field and save the changes.

To complete the process, return to the Google Search Console verification page. 

Click the “Verify” button. If you successfully verify your site, you will receive a confirmation message indicating that Google Search Console has verified it.

Submitting Your WordPress Sitemap to Google

A sitemap is crucial for improving your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). It acts as a roadmap for search engines like Google, providing a list of all the pages and posts on your website. This helps search engines efficiently discover and index your content, ensuring that they can find and understand all the pages on your site.

The good news is that WordPress automatically generates a sitemap for you. You can find your sitemap at `yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml`. This sitemap is automatically updated whenever you add or remove content from your website, ensuring that it always reflects the current structure of your site.

To maximize the benefits of your sitemap, you need to submit it to Google Search Console. To do this:

• In your Google Search Console account, select “Sitemaps.” from the sidebar.
• Next, paste your website’s full sitemap URL (`yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml`) into the URL box.
• Then click the “Submit” button.

Once submitted, your sitemap will appear in the list of submitted sitemaps in Google Search Console. This helps Google discover your content more effectively, improving your website’s search engine rankings and driving more organic traffic.

Submitting New Posts to Google

While submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console is important, it might not be enough for time-sensitive content. Sitemaps are typically crawled on a schedule (weekly, biweekly, or even monthly), which can delay indexing your latest news articles, blog posts, or job postings.

To ensure your fresh content is quickly discovered by search engines, we recommend submitting individual posts directly to Google. This helps speed up the crawling and indexing process, so your fresh content shows up in search results faster.

To do this, we recommend using the CrawlWP plugin. This excellent WordPress SEO plugin automates the submission of your new posts, pages, and other content to major search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, and Yep.

To start using CrawlWP, purchase and install the CrawlWP plugin on your WordPress site.

Then, navigate to CrawlWP >> Settings >> Indexing >> General in your WordPress dashboard.

From there, pick the types of content you want to send to Google for indexing.  

You’re in control of how and when notifications are sent. You can set it up to alert search engines whenever new posts or terms are added, updated, or deleted, or a mix of these options. 

Now that your WordPress posts are set to be automatically submitted to Google for indexing after publication and updates.

The next step is to configure the Google API to make this happen.

Configure the Google API

To do this, go to your ‘WordPress Dashboard >> CrawlWP >> Settings >> Indexing >> Google API‘ and enable it.

• Then click on “Save Changes”. 
• Next, let’s configure the API settings. 

You’ll need to obtain an API key from Google to authorize submitting your content for indexing.

• To connect CrawlWP to the Google Indexing API, you must first create a project in the Google Cloud Console. 
• Then, you’ll need to enable the Indexing API service for this project and create a service account.

For a complete guide, refer to the article on integrating WordPress with the Google Search API.

Build Backlinks to Your Site  

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site. They play an essential role in improving your site’s visibility on Google because search engines see backlinks as a sign of credibility and trustworthiness. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the better your site will likely rank in search engine results.  

Here’s how you can build backlinks to your WordPress site:  

Create High-Quality Content

Content is the foundation of backlink building. Publish engaging, original, and valuable content that others will naturally want to link to. This could include how-to guides, infographics, videos, or in-depth blog posts that solve problems or provide valuable insights.  

Guest Blogging

Reach out to relevant websites in your niche and offer to write guest posts. In exchange, request a link back to your WordPress site. Ensure the websites you target have good domain authority and a relevant audience.  

Engage in Outreach

Contact bloggers, influencers, and industry website owners to inform them about your content. Politely ask if they’d consider linking to your site if it aligns with their audience’s interests.  

Leverage social media and Forums

Share your content on LinkedIn, Twitter, and niche forums to drive attention and attract natural backlinks. Participate in discussions and subtly introduce your site where relevant.  

Directory Submissions

Submit your WordPress site to reputable online directories. Choose directories that are well-regarded and relevant to your site’s niche.  

Broken Link Building

Identify broken links on websites in your niche and suggest you content as a replacement. This will provide value to the website owner and earn you a backlink.  

Collaborate with Others: Partner with other website owners for co-branded content, interviews, or joint webinars, often leading to mutual backlinks.  

Avoid buying backlinks, participating in link farms, or using other manipulative tactics. Such practices can result in Google penalties and harm your site’s reputation.  

By consistently building quality backlinks, you’ll improve your WordPress website’s chances of being listed on Google and boost its overall SEO performance.

Improve Your Ranking with Good Content  

Getting your website listed on Google is just the beginning. To truly stand out, you must aim for higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is where creating SEO-friendly content becomes essential. 

Google rewards websites consistently by delivering high-quality, relevant, and well-optimized content, giving them better visibility and ranking.

Here’s how you can create content that not only gets noticed but also earns a top spot on Google: 

Conduct Keyword Research

Identify the terms and phrases your target audience is searching for. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to discover keywords with high search volume and low competition. Integrate these keywords naturally into your content without overstuffing.  

Write Engaging Titles and Meta Descriptions

Your title tag and meta description are the first things users see on search engine result pages. Ensure your titles are concise compelling and include your primary keyword. Write meta descriptions that provide a brief but engaging summary of your content.

Learn how to add to Keywords and Meta Description in your WordPress website.

Use Headings Strategically

Break your content into sections using headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Include your primary keyword in at least one heading, and ensure the structure is logical. This will make navigating your content easy for readers and search engines.  

Optimize Images

Include relevant images to make your content visually appealing. Optimize them by compressing image file sizes to ensure your site loads quickly. Use descriptive file names with keywords, like “seo-tips.png,” to give search engines context about the image. Don’t forget to add alt text—this not only improves accessibility but also gives your SEO a boost by helping search engines understand what the image is about.

Incorporate Internal and External Links

Link to other pages on your WordPress site to create a logical flow and help users discover more of your content. Also, provide links to credible and authoritative sources to support your content.  

Focus on Readability

Write content that is easy to understand. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and straightforward language. Tools like Grammarly or Hemingway can help you assess and improve readability.  

Mobile Optimization

Ensure your content is mobile-friendly, as many users access the web through mobile devices. Use a responsive WordPress theme and test your site’s performance on various screen sizes.

Update Content Regularly

Keep your content fresh and relevant by periodically updating posts with new information, statistics, or insights.

Tracking Index Status of Your Content

Submitting your WordPress site to Google is important, as is monitoring the indexing status of your posts and pages, allowing you to verify if your content has been successfully indexed. 

Without indexing, your content won’t appear in search results, limiting its visibility to your audience.

The CrawlWP plugin offers a valuable feature that monitors the index status of your WordPress pages.

CrawlWP also includes an auto-indexing feature that regularly scans your site for un-indexed pages and automatically submits them to search engines for indexing.

Manually Request Google Indexing in WordPress  

Using CrawlWP, you can manually request search engines to index specific content.

To do this, check the boxes next to the posts you want to submit for indexing on the SEO Indexing page, use the “Bulk Actions” dropdown menu, select “Submit for Indexing,” and click Apply.

Monitoring SEO Performance and Rankings  

The SEO Stats page in CrawlWP provides insights into your site’s performance and the organic traffic Google drives to it. This feature makes it an excellent tool for tracking indexing status and monitoring search traffic effectively.

The CrawlWP SEO Stats dashboard provides key metrics about your website, along with actionable insights to help enhance your site’s rankings and user experience.

Conclusion 

Getting your WordPress site listed on Google is essential for driving traffic and gaining visibility. With billions of searches happening daily, being listed by Google opens up opportunities to connect with a global audience, establish your site’s credibility, and boost your rankings.  

The process might seem overwhelming initially, but by following this guide, we’ve broken it down into manageable steps to simplify it.  

Every action you take brings your site closer to improved visibility, from setting up Google Search Console and submitting your sitemap to Google to building strong backlinks. 

Note that consistency is key. To remain competitive, regularly update your content, monitor your site’s performance, and stay up to date with Google’s best practices.  

We hope this article has helped you learn how to get your WordPress website listed on Google quickly.