After creating your website, you need to make sure that your content is available on search engines for prospective users to find out. Here is the simple and easy way to add your website to search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo & Yandex. Let’s get started
Prerequisite
Your Sitemap XML URL, generally available at the root (like for blogs also it is available at https://regardingtech.com/sitemap.xml)
Login to your DNS (Domain Name Service) Provider. I am using Cloudflare here, but the same applies to any DNS/domain provider.
Steps to add your website to search engines
Google:
- Login to Google Search Console and create a property.
- Enter your domain name (eg. regardingtech.com).
- Google will provide you with a TXT record enter it into your DNS provider.
- Click verify in google. It should add the property if not wait for few hours and verify again.
- After verification go to your Property > Index > Sitemap and enter your sitemap URL and submit. That’s it Google will add your pages to the search engine.
Bing and Yahoo
Yahoo search is powered by Bing, so to get listed on Yahoo and Bing both you just need to add it to Bing alone.
- Login to Bing Webmaster, You can use the same google id to authenticate for easy management.
- Add Site > Enter your URL like before > Click Add
- On Add and Verify Page > Go to Add CNAME record to DNS section and copy the record and enter in your DNS
- Click Verify.
- Go to Sitemap and enter your sitemap URL and submit. Bing and Yahoo will use this sitemap to add all your pages to search results.
Yandex
Yandex is another search engine on which you may wanna add your site. To do that.
- Login to Yandex Webmaster site. Again I used google login here for easy management but you can use a different login if you have or to make it more secure.
- Add your site URL. It will provide a similar TXT record like Google which we need to add to our DNS provider.
- After adding and verifying you can proceed to submit your sitemap.
- Go to Indexing > Sitemap files. Enter your sitemap URL and click Add.
- The sitemap will be processed after some time and it will be available on Yandex Search.
All the mentioned websites above help you do much more than just adding to search results like providing statistics and tips for performance, health, etc. which can help you tailor content and improve ranking. Keep exploring.
Other search engines like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, etc. source their results from these search engines so you do not need to add to them separately.