In part 1, I talked about: domain names, titles, meta tags, content and valid formatting. Now I am going to talk a bit more about search engine submissions.

Once you have your domain name, and the website is live on the Internet, you face the problem of getting people to your website. The ‘easiest’ way to have people arrive at your website is via a search engine. There are two specific ways to have your website appear in a Google search, for example.

1. Submit your website to Google
In order to submit your website to Google search engines, you will have to do a couple things.

Firstly, you will need to sign up for an account with Google. Once your account is created, you will be able to login to the Google webmaster tools area. Towards the top left of the website, you will be able to add your website. Google will then ask you to verify your website, this can be done in two ways: Either by adding some code to your website, or by uploading a file to where your website is hosted/stored online. I often find it easier to just upload a file, rather than opening up files and editing the source code.

2. Create a site map
In my experience, I have found site maps to be an absolute gift, they have ranked many of my websites as number 1 on Google searches, and would without a doubt say that it is probably one of the most effective ways to get your website listed/indexed with Google. Here is a fantastic little tool, which will create your site map for you - Simply enter in your domain name, let the tool do its thing, and it’ll provide you with a site map. The sitemap.xml file will be downloadable, once downloaded, upload it to your website.

Right, now to tell Google about it. Back to the webmaster tools, there will be a link to provide a sitemap - click this option. Here you will be asked to choose a type of sitemap, choose the “Add General Web Sitemap” option. At this point, it will ask you to enter in the URL (uniform resource locator) for the sitemap. An example would be https://webtrepreneur.co.za/sitemap.xml. It is simply asking you to point it in the direction of the sitemap.xml file you uploaded. Once you have completed this step, you are done. Google will send its web spiders out and take a look at your website!

I hope my instructions have not been too complicated or complex, I have tried my best to make them as user friendly as possible, as it is vital to have your website submitted to Google. There are other search engines, which you can list your website on, but Google remains the most popular choice amongst web users.

Please remember: Once you have listed your website with Google, and submitted a sitemap, Google will not immediately rank you on their web searches. There are thousands of websites trying to get listed, so give it a couple days, before you try finding your website on Google! If you click here, you will see an example of webtrepreneur.co.za being ranked as number 1.

We are almost at the point, where we can start looking at advertising on your website!