"Why doesn't my new website immediately show on Google?" - Video

I was joined by a special guest - my 13-year-old son - who asked, "Why doesn't my new website immediately show on Google?"

He had recently taken his custom lego product website Galactic Customs live and was concerned to find it wasn't immediately discoverable on Google.

Why doesn't my website show up on Google immediately?

As an entrepreneur, he was excited to see his efforts come to life and be accessible to the world.

Immediately, once his new website was live, he Googled it and found that... it didn't come up.

According to SEO Mechanic, "Typically it can take up to four weeks for it to begin to show up in search engine results. While we might be accustomed to getting things online quickly, search engine indexes can be rather slow."

Google takes a little time to discover the site, crawl it, and index it.

This is one of the reasons to turn the site on early when it's new.

What can I do to get my website on Google quickly?

Ranking on Google for your name should be quick, just a few weeks.

Ranking for your products, services, or ideas tends to take longer. More than that, the more competitive the keyword or phrase the harder it will be for you to ever rank well.

Updating your existing profiles like Facebook, Google Business Profile, etc. can accelerate the process.

Setting up your Google Search Console account (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) enables you to officially request Google index-specific pages and you can manually submit your sitemap following the example below. 

Locable websites automatically submit the Sitemap nightly but using Google Search Console is a preferred channel to expedite updating your website, especially brand-new websites.

We understand that Google Search Console is a more complex activity for most small businesses. We can submit your site as part of our Professional Assistance plans though having access as a business owner can share insights over time.

SEO is part of an ongoing effective marketing practice

There are very few set-it-and-forget-it options in marketing and SEO is definitely not one... it takes ongoing action, fortunately, Locable's local marketing software simplifies these activities so that most can be done in under 15-minutes.

Business Blogging is a critical ongoing activity and is the single biggest thing you can do for SEO while Collecting Customer Reviews and cross-promoting with your Local Connections™ are also great traffic and referral generators. 

Progress since Galactic Customs' launch

In the time since we shot this video, his site is now ranking well on Google. 

If you were to search for "Mandalorian Customs" for instance, at the time of writing Galactic Customs is the 4th organic result behind the Starwars Fan wiki, Etsy, and Pinterest - not bad!!!

His site now ranks because he has quality information, has begun posting blog posts about products, and - in his case - he is learning video editing and launched a YouTube channel from which he also embeds videos into blog posts on his site.