New website owners often ask this question, and it’s quite understandable. After all the work you’ve put into getting every little detail of your website just the way you want it, you’re ready for the flood of new customers to start knocking down your virtual door!
And then the silence hits you… days and weeks go by without so much as an inquiry from your shiny new website. How disappointing, right?
Be patient my friend. The traffic you will receive from search engines will be less like flood gates being opened, and more like turning on a faucet very slowly.
We’ll use our own website, NuggetWeb.com, as an example. We started our website in November of last year, and submitted it to Google at the start of the New Year. The following chart shows how often our website came up as a result of a Google search, beginning in January.
You can see from the chart that it took approximately three months to get any results, but also that the results gradually increase over time.
You will, of course, want to make sure your website is listed in the search engines to begin with. For our clients, having a link from our website will tell the search engines about your website, but it’s still a good idea to submit your website.
To submit your website to Google, or any of their other services such as YouTube, use this link (you may want to go ahead and sign up for Webmaster Tools while you’re there):
For Bing, you can submit your website here, and they also have a Webmaster Tools that’s worth signing up for:
We can’t promise you that every website will see positive search engine results – after all, you have to work at it a little bit. But with a little knowledge under your belt, a bit of hard work and some patience, you will begin to see more and more visitors showing up from search engines.
Do you still have questions? Check out our other articles about search engine optimization, and send us your SEO tips on our Facebook or Twitter pages!