How to get your business website on Google: a beginner’s SEO checklist

Step 1: Tell Google your site exists

• Create a free Google Search Console account and verify your domain.
• Submit your sitemap (usually yoursite.com/sitemap.xml).
• Use “URL inspection” on your most important pages and click “Request indexing”.
• Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools — it also feeds Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.

Step 2: Set up Google Business Profile

If you serve customers in a city, a Google Business Profile is often the fastest way to appear in local results and on Google Maps. Add accurate categories, opening hours, photos and your website link, and ask real customers for reviews.

Step 3: Get the basics right on every page

• A unique title (around 50–60 characters) that says what the page is about.
• A meta description that would make you click if you saw it in search results.
• One clear H1 heading per page.
• Descriptive image file names and alt text.
• Pages that load quickly on a mid-range phone.

Step 4: Write pages people actually search for

Each service, location or product you want to be found for needs its own page that answers the searcher’s questions: what it is, who it is for, how much it costs, how it works and why choose you. Thin pages with a few lines rarely rank.

Step 5: Earn a few good links

• List your business in relevant, trustworthy directories in your industry.
• Get mentioned by suppliers, partners, local associations or event pages.
• Publish genuinely useful guides that others want to reference.
• Avoid buying links or joining link schemes — they can get a site penalised.

Step 6: Be patient and measure

New or updated pages usually take days to weeks to be indexed and longer to rank well. Check Search Console every couple of weeks to see which searches show your pages, then improve the pages that are close to the first page of results.