How to Get Your Website on Google: A Guide for Small Businesses
Your website is live. You’ve typed your business name into Google and found a Facebook page, a Yell listing, and a plumber in Bristol with a similar name. Where’s your site? Getting your website on Google is two separate jobs, and most people only know about one. The first is getting Google to find and store your site, which is called indexing. The second is getting it to show your site above other people’s, which is ranking. The first is quick, free and largely within your control. The second takes longer, and anyone who promises a particular result is guessing.
Indexed versus ranking: the distinction that explains everything
Google keeps a vast copy of the web, called its index. When somebody searches, Google looks in the index, not the live web, and picks the pages it thinks answer the question best.
So your site has to be in the index before it can appear for anything. Once it’s there, it can appear for your business name almost straight away, because very few other pages are about you. Appearing for “electrician in Wakefield”, though, means beating every other electrician, directory and Facebook page Google has filed under that heading. That’s ranking, and our plain-English guide to local SEO covers it in depth.
Search your business name first, and your service second. They tell you different things.
Step one: check whether you’re already in the index
Open Google and type site:yourdomain.co.uk with your own domain in place of the example, no spaces. Google will list every page from that domain it has stored.
- Pages appear: you’re indexed. If you still can’t find yourself by searching your name, skip to the troubleshooting section.
- Nothing appears: Google hasn’t picked you up yet, or something is stopping it. Carry on reading.
Do this in a private browsing window, because Google personalises results for signed-in users.
Step two: set up Google Search Console
Search Console is Google’s free tool for website owners. It tells you which pages are indexed, which searches you appear for, and whether anything is blocking Google from reading your site.
- Add your site as a property. “Domain” covers every version of your address at once and is the better choice; “URL prefix” covers one exact address.
- Verify you own it. For a domain property, Google gives you a text record to add wherever your domain is managed. If that sounds daunting, whoever built or hosts your site can usually do it in minutes. Other methods include uploading a small file to your site.
- Submit your sitemap. Most modern sites generate one at an address such as
yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xmlorsitemap-index.xml. Open the Sitemaps section and paste that address in. It hands Google a list of every page you want looked at. - Request indexing for your main pages. Paste a page’s address into the inspection bar at the top. If Google reports it isn’t indexed, there’s a button to request it. Do this for your homepage and service pages.
Google doesn’t promise how quickly any of this happens, and we won’t either. Requesting indexing puts your page in a queue; it doesn’t jump it.
Why a brand-new site takes a while
Google finds new pages mostly by following links from pages it already knows. A site live for a week with nothing linking to it is a book in a library nobody has catalogued yet. It isn’t broken. It’s new. The sitemap and indexing request are the fastest way to tell Google you exist; giving it a path to follow is the second.
Step three: link to your site from places Google already trusts
- Your Google Business Profile. The single most useful link you can add. The Website button sends customers to you and tells Google the profile and the site belong together. Our step-by-step guide to Google Business Profile walks through setting one up.
- Your Facebook page. Put the address in the About section and the website field. See our guide to setting up a Facebook page for a business.
- Free directories. Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, your local chamber of commerce and trade bodies all let you list a website. Our list of free UK business directories covers which are worth the ten minutes.
- Suppliers and customers. A genuine link from a real local organisation is worth more than a hundred from a directory nobody reads.
Don’t pay anyone who emails offering “500 high-quality backlinks”. Those come from junk sites, and Google is good at spotting them.
Why is my website not showing on Google? The usual reasons
If you’ve done all of the above and still can’t find your site for your own name, work down this list.
| What you see | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
site: search shows nothing, site is under a month old | Simply not crawled yet | Submit the sitemap, request indexing, add the Business Profile link, then wait |
site: search shows nothing, site is older | A “noindex” tag or a blocked robots.txt file | Ask whoever built it to check; it’s a one-line fix |
Site shows for site: but not for your name | Your name isn’t actually on the page in text | Make sure the business name appears in the title and headings, not just inside a logo image |
| Only a “coming soon” page shows | Google indexed the placeholder | Replace it with the real site and request indexing again |
| Shows on your laptop, not your phone | Personalised or location-based results | Check in a private window and don’t read too much into it |
| Shows for your name, not for “plumber in [town]“ | You’re indexed; you aren’t ranking yet | That’s the second job: reviews, a complete profile, and time |
That “noindex” row deserves a word. Sites are often built behind a setting that tells Google to ignore them, so a half-finished site doesn’t get indexed. Left on at launch, it makes the site invisible however good it is. It’s a common and silent mistake, and Search Console will tell you plainly that a page is excluded and why.
Getting your website on the first page of Google
Nobody can guarantee a first-page position for a competitive search, and anyone who does will either charge you for nothing or do something that gets your site penalised. What is reliably true is that businesses on page one for local searches tend to have a complete, active Google Business Profile, a steady flow of genuine reviews, and a website that says plainly what they do and where. Our guide to getting more Google reviews is the best place to start, because reviews are the part you can influence every week.
For your own name, first page is realistic and usually quick once you’re indexed. For “your trade in your town”, it’s a slope you climb, not a switch you flick.
Where we declare our interest
Plenty of businesses stall at the first step because there’s no website to get onto Google at all. Here’s where we declare our interest: Ready Set Web builds brochure websites for UK businesses free, using the content already on your Google Business Profile, on a free .co.uk domain, live within 48 hours of the domain being registered. The only cost is hosting at £24 a month including VAT, with no minimum term. We submit the sitemap and point your profile’s Website button at it as part of the build. Here’s how it works.
The short version
Search site:yourdomain.co.uk to see whether you’re indexed. Set up Search Console, submit your sitemap and request indexing. Link to the site from your Google Business Profile, Facebook page and a few real directories. Then be patient about your name, and realistic about everything else.