How to Get My Website on Google: 12 Steps, With What Each Screen Shows and How Long It Takes

How to get my website on Google, in twelve steps

'How do I get my website on Google' has a short answer: a list of free steps in the right order, then a wait that feels longer than it is. The order matters more than the speed. A site verified on a builder's preview address has to be set up again on the real domain, and a page requested ten times is crawled no sooner than one requested once.

In Theo's audit of 5,974 small business websites, 48 percent of the 4,027 sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. The State of Small Business Websites 2026 has the full numbers; the point here is that a site can be in Google's index and still send no one to the business. Steps 1 to 7 put the pages in the index, step 8 puts the business on the map, and steps 9 to 12 get a page to rank for a service and a town.

Step 1: Check whether Google already has the site (2 minutes)

Three searches show whether Google already has the site, which decides the work ahead.

1. Type site:yourdomain.com into Google, with no space after the colon. The results are the pages Google has stored from that domain. If Google reports that the search did not match any documents, nothing is indexed and every step below applies. If a list comes back, count it against the pages the site has; a 20-page site with three results is only partly indexed.
2. Search the business name with the town. If only a Business Profile, a Facebook page or a directory listing appears, Google has either not indexed the site or not tied it to the business yet.
3. Search one service and the town the way a customer would, such as 'gutter cleaning' plus the town. A site that appears for its own name but not here is indexed and outranked, a ranking problem; the guide to why a website is not showing up on Google works through the causes, and steps 9 to 12 here are the fix.

Step 2: Put the site on your own domain before you verify anything (a few hours)

Search Console ties each property to one domain or one exact address, so a site verified on a builder's preview address needs a new property when the real domain arrives, and the history gathered under the preview address does not follow it.

A new Theo site starts as a preview you refine in chat and then publish. Theo walks through the registrar settings: point both the root and the www version at the site, turn off forwarding and parking, and leave the email records alone. Once the registrar's records update, usually a few hours later, the domain points at the new site, and the old one keeps serving visitors until then. The domains page covers connecting a domain or buying one inside Theo.

Pick one version of the address as the main one and let the other redirect to it, so Google is not asked to index two copies of every page. The post on www vs non-www addresses explains how to choose.

Step 3: Make sure nothing on the site is telling Google to stay out (10 minutes)

Google's own list of reasons it misses a site is short: no other site links to it yet, it has not been crawled yet, its design cannot be crawled (images only, or pages that are not HTML), or Google could not fetch the pages, for example behind a login wall or a blocking setting. Steps 5 to 7 fix the first two; the other two take ten minutes.

Three settings keep a site out no matter what else is done: a noindex tag, a Disallow line for the whole site in robots.txt, and the builder switch usually labeled hide from search engines or coming soon, which some builders leave on after the build. Anything Google should read has to be text on the page, not text inside a photo or a PDF. The demo restaurant site Theo built writes the menu as text so search engines read it, with the hours and address on every page; a menu uploaded as a picture gives Google nothing to match.

1. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in a browser. A line reading Disallow: / on its own, under User-agent: *, blocks the whole site; a file that lists a few private folders, or nothing at all, is fine.
2. In the builder's settings, confirm the site is set to be visible to search engines, and publish again after changing it. Then open the homepage in a private browser window; if it asks for a password, Google meets the same wall.
3. Confirm the site loads over https, with the padlock, on both root and www. A secure connection is on Google's basic checklist; every Theo site is a static site served over HTTPS, so on Theo this is already done.

Step 4: Verify the site in Google Search Console (minutes, once the record shows)

Search Console is Google's free report on your site: which pages are indexed, which searches show them, and what Google could not read. It lives in your own Google account, so the history stays yours.

What the screen shows: after you click Add property, two cards sit side by side. The left card, Domain, asks for the bare domain and covers every version at once, root and www, http and https. The right card, URL prefix, covers one exact address only. Choose Domain wherever the registrar allows it.

1. Choose Domain, type the domain without www or https, and continue. Google displays a verification record to add at the registrar; save it there exactly as shown and come back.
2. Click Verify. A green check with the words Ownership verified means the property is live. If Google reports that it could not find the record, wait a few hours and try again.
3. Leave the new property alone for a few days. Every report starts empty and fills in as Google looks; an empty Pages report on day one means nothing.

Step 5: Submit the sitemap (5 minutes)

A sitemap is a file that lists every page address on the site with the date it last changed. Google reads it to find pages it has not reached through links, and Google's guidance names it as the way to submit many pages at once, after a launch or a move.

What the screen shows: in the left menu under Indexing, click Sitemaps. In the Add a new sitemap box, paste the full address, https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and click Submit. A row appears with the date Google last read the file, a status that should read Success, and the number of pages discovered. Couldn't fetch usually means a typo; open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser to confirm the file exists.

Keep the dates true: a sitemap with the same date on every page teaches Google to ignore the dates. On a Theo site the sitemap is generated and kept current, and once the domain is active and Search Console is connected from your account, Theo submits new and changed pages through it as part of the growth work on Starter and Pro; the growth work switches on once the domain and both Google connections are in place.

Step 6: Request indexing for the pages that earn money (a few days to a few weeks)

URL Inspection is where you ask Google to fetch one specific page. Google's guidance is to use it for a few pages rather than every page: there is a quota for submitting individual URLs, requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL will not get it crawled any faster, and a request by itself does not put the page in the index.

What the screen shows: paste the full page address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. A panel reports URL is on Google with a green check, or URL is not on Google with the reason listed under Page indexing. Under it is a Request indexing link; a short live test runs, then a box confirms Indexing requested.

1. Request the homepage, each service page, the contact page and the service-area page, once each, and write down the date. A repeat spends part of the quota and, in Google's words, will not get the page crawled any faster.
2. Check back after a week, not after an hour. Google's published crawl range runs to weeks, and the panel's Last crawl date is the proof it happened.
3. A page still marked Discovered, currently not indexed after a month will not move on further requests. The post on how to get Google to index a site explains that status and the linking work that moves it.

Step 7: Link every page from a page Google already reads (an afternoon)

Google decides what to fetch next by how valuable a page looks; on a small site, the everyday signal of value is a link from a page Google already visits. A page nothing links to is the first reason on Google's own list of why a site is missed, and a link inside a sentence counts for more than a footer list.

• In the homepage copy, link in a sentence to each service page and each area page: the sentence about drain cleaning links to the drain cleaning page.
• Link related pages to each other and back: a post about water heater costs points to the water heater service page, and the service page points to the post.
• Keep every page within three clicks of the homepage; a page reachable only through a page Google has not fetched is invisible in practice.

Step 8: Claim the Google Business Profile so the business shows on the map (an hour, plus verification)

For a local business, the map panel is usually the first place the business appears, and it does not wait for the website to be indexed. Google's checklist says the same: a local business needs a Business Profile, the free listing with name, address, hours, phone, reviews and a website link that shows in map results and beside a search for the business name.

Create or claim the profile, put the site's address in the Website field, and make the name, address and phone number match the website word for word, down to the suite number. Google asks you to prove the business is real, by a method Google chooses, and the profile goes live once that verification completes. Theo's Boost checklist walks you through this listing and the others that matter.

Step 9: Give every service its own page, with a title Google can show (a week for the first set)

Indexing puts a page in the running. Whether it appears for a search depends on whether the page uses the words the customer typed: a remodeling company that describes its work as exterior renewal does not appear for siding contractor, however well the page is built. The plain phrase belongs in the page title, the main heading and the first paragraph, once each, and the rest of the page is written for the reader.

What the screen shows: in a Google result, the blue link line is the page's title tag, and the gray lines under it are usually the meta description, which Google may rewrite. Both are set per page, in the builder's page settings or in chat on a Theo site. The decision rule for a title is service, then town, then business name: Water Heater Repair in Tacoma, followed by the company. A description reads like an answer, not a slogan: what the service is, where, and how to book or call.

The demo plumbing site Theo built shows the structure: click-to-call in the header, a service page each for repair, drains and water heaters, service-area pages by town, and reviews with license details. One page per service and one per main town gives Google a page to match to 'water heater repair' plus the town, instead of asking one services page to rank for everything; the examples page shows fifteen demo sites, one per industry.

Step 10: Make the site fast and easy to use on a phone (an afternoon, then a check each quarter)

Google's basic checklist includes a site that is fast and easy to use on all devices, and a customer looking for a local service is usually holding a phone. The check is not technical: open the busiest three pages on a phone over mobile data. The text should be readable without zooming, the phone number tappable, and the page free of sideways scrolling.

Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool reports what slows a page; the usual causes on a small business site are photos uploaded at full camera size, a homepage video that plays on its own, and a stack of embedded widgets. On a Theo site the pages are static, which rules out a slow server response, and page speed is one of the technical items the growth work keeps in order on Starter and Pro.

• Once a quarter, open the homepage, the busiest service page and the contact page on a phone and fix anything that needs a zoom or a sideways scroll.
• Every new photo goes up sized for the web rather than straight from the camera roll; on Theo, drag the photo into the chat and ask for it to be placed.

Step 11: Put the site's address on every listing and earn a few outside links (an hour, then ongoing)

Google discovers most sites by following links, and it judges a new domain partly by who points at it. A site whose address appears nowhere else gives Google no path in and no reason to hurry. In the same audit, 65 percent of sites had a Semrush Authority Score of 5 or less, near the bottom of that scale; a handful of real mentions is what separates a new site from that group.

1. Add the web address to every profile the business controls: the Business Profile, Facebook, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and Yelp. The Boost checklist inside Theo lists them in order.
2. Ask the places that already know the business for a link: the chamber of commerce, the trade association, a supplier that lists its installers, the local paper, the youth team's sponsor page.
3. Skip link farms and bulk link sellers; links that count come from pages a person would actually read.

Step 12: Keep adding pages, and read two Search Console reports every week (10 minutes a week, for months)

A five-page site can rank for the business name and little else. Sites that win service searches add a page for each service, then each main area, then the questions customers ask, steadily rather than all at once, and give each new page a link from a page already indexed. That is the part no setting replaces, and it is the part that compounds.

Two Search Console reports say whether it is working. Pages, under Indexing, counts the indexed pages and groups every excluded page by reason; the count rising week over week is the first sign that steps 4 to 7 took. Search results, under Performance, shows impressions, clicks and average position by query; impressions rise before clicks do, and a query with an average position past 20 is the next page to improve.

What it looks like from inside Search Console: Buy My Lunch, a school lunch ordering service, moved to Theo in June 2026. In its own Search Console data through September 27, 2026, the site had 929 clicks from Google search in the last 90 days, up from 131 in the 90 days before; impressions rose from 7,500 to 61,700 over the same two periods, and the average position moved from 13 to 8 as the growth work published pages.

How to show up in AI answers such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews

Google now answers many how-to searches with an AI Overview above the ordinary results, and some customers ask ChatGPT for a plumber or a dentist instead of searching at all. Those answers come from pages the tools can read, so a page that is not indexed cannot be cited; what changes is the shape of the page. AI answers quote pages that state a fact plainly, in a sentence that stands on its own, next to the business name and the town.

On a Theo site, working toward citations in AI search tools, including ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, is part of the ongoing growth work on Starter and Pro. No one can promise a citation any more than a ranking; what the work does is give the tools something exact to quote.

• One question per heading, answered in the first sentence under it, on the FAQ page and each service page. Add a question whenever the phone brings a new one; on Starter and Pro the growth work writes the answer pages.
• Business facts stated the same way everywhere: name, address, phone, hours, service area and services, on the site and on every listing from step 11.
• Prices and ranges written as text wherever the business is willing to publish them; an answer with a number gets quoted over one without.

How long it takes to get a website on Google

The honest timeline is weeks for indexing and months for ranking. Google's own guidance gives two ranges and no promises: a requested crawl can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and it can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new site, or any changes.

Which steps the owner does and which Theo does

Google charges nothing for any of it; what costs money is the site and the work after indexing. Basic, at $29.99 a month, is the site with hosting and no SEO program; Starter, at $69.99 a month and free for the first 30 days, adds the ongoing growth work, which never uses chat credits; Pro, at $129.99 a month, adds more weekly pages and posts.

Mistakes that keep a new website off Google, and the fix for each

Each of these keeps a site off Google, and each has a tell and a fix that takes less time than the waiting did.

Frequently asked questions