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How to Submit Your Handmade Seller Website to Google for 2024 (and Ensure it’s Indexed)

Boost Your Online Visibility + Ensure Your Website Is Easy to Find

As a handmade seller, your website is your storefront, and in today’s digital world, ensuring your site is indexed by Google is essential to getting discovered by new customers. If your website isn’t appearing in search results, it’s like having a shop in the middle of nowhere without any signs leading to it.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how to submit your website to Google in 2024, the benefits of doing so, and how to quickly check if your site is properly indexed. I promise, it's easier than you might think!

Why Submitting Your Website to Google Matters

Submitting your website to Google ensures that Google knows your website exists and can start crawling, indexing, and ranking your pages. While Google might eventually discover your site on its own, manually submitting it speeds up the process.

For handmade sellers, this is crucial because:

  • Improved Visibility: The faster your site is indexed, the quicker it can appear in search results. This means potential customers can find you when they’re searching for products like yours.

  • Increased Traffic: When your site shows up in search results, you’ll get more organic traffic, which leads to more potential sales.

  • Better Search Rankings: Once Google indexes your site, it can start ranking your pages. The earlier you submit, the sooner you can begin optimizing your SEO to climb those rankings.


Step-by-Step Guide to Submitting Your Website to Google

1. Set Up Google Search Console

Before submitting your website, you'll need to set up Google Search Console. It's a free tool that helps you track your site’s performance in Google Search and provides insights into any issues.

  • Go to Google Search Console and sign in with your Google account.

  • Add your website as a new property by clicking "Add Property" in the Search Console dashboard.

  • You'll need to verify ownership of your site, which you can do by adding a small HTML code to your site’s header or uploading a file to your server.

2. Submit Your Sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website. It helps Google crawl and index your site more efficiently.

  • In your Google Search Console dashboard, navigate to the “Sitemaps” section on the left-hand side.

  • Enter the URL of your sitemap (usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).

  • Click “Submit.”

Google will now know exactly where to find all your pages and begin indexing them.

3. Request Indexing for Individual Pages

If you have specific new pages or products you want to be indexed quickly (like a new collection or product line), you can submit those URLs directly.

  • Go to the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.

  • Enter the URL of the page you want to check or submit.

  • If the page is not yet indexed, you’ll have the option to request indexing.

How to Check if Your Website Is Indexed

After you’ve submitted your website, you’ll want to confirm that Google has properly indexed it. Here's how to do it easily:

  1. Google Search: One of the simplest ways to check if your site is indexed is to use Google Search itself. Type this into the search bar:

    makefile

    Copy code

    site:yourdomain.com

    If Google shows your website pages in the results, congratulations—your site is indexed! If not, it may still be processing, or you may need to troubleshoot why it hasn’t been indexed.

  2. Google Search Console: In your Search Console dashboard, go to the Coverage section. This will give you a list of all pages Google has indexed and any errors that may have occurred. If there are errors, resolve them and request indexing again.

Tips to Ensure Proper Indexing

  1. Mobile-Friendly Site: Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing, meaning it looks at the mobile version of your site before the desktop version. Make sure your handmade shop is mobile-friendly.

  2. Good Page Speed: Slow websites can struggle to get indexed or ranked well. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your site’s speed and make improvements if necessary.

  3. Internal Linking: Make sure all your important pages are linked to from other parts of your site. This makes it easier for Google’s bots to find and index your content.

My Real-World Experience

When I launched my latest collection for my handmade business, I realized I hadn't submitted the new collection pages to Google. While waiting for Google to crawl my site on its own, I noticed that traffic to the new collection was super slow. After manually submitting the URLs through Search Console, I saw an increase in search traffic within a few days (3 to be exact). Now, I never wait for Google to find my pages—I always submit them right away.

Conclusion: Don’t Miss Out on Potential Customers

Getting your handmade website indexed by Google is one of the most crucial steps you can take to grow your online presence. By submitting your site, you ensure that your pages are discoverable by potential customers. And with the help of Google Search Console, you can make sure that every page, product, and blog post is easy to find.

Ready to boost your website’s visibility? Get your site indexed and start driving more traffic today!

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