Google’s Search Console

This is a quick guide on quickly getting Google to crawl your website.

1. Got to Google’s Search Console
   https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
   You will need to login using your Google account.
2. Click ‘Add a Site’ and enter in your websites full URL:
   eg. http://mywebsite.com
   (quickest way to do this is to visit your site in a browser and copy paste the URL in the address bar)
3. You will now need to verify you own the site – if you have the FTP details for your site you can download the verification file and upload it to the top section of your websites hosting
   (you may need to get help from your webmaster, developer or hosting company)
   There are some alternative methods you can try.
4. Once verified navigate to ‘Crawl’ > ‘Fetch as Google’
   
5. You will then be prompted to enter in the URL you want Google to crawl. If you want the whole site, don’t enter anything. But if it is a blog article for example, enter in the URL path for that specific blog. This is the text that appears after your main URL.
   eg. https://metacreative.com.au/is-it-time-to-get-lazy/ (the text in bold)
6. Click ‘Fetch & Render’ and after a few seconds the URL will appear in the list below.
7. Now simply press ‘Submit’
8. The next step will ask you if you want to just ‘Crawl this URL’  or ‘Crawl this URL and its direct links’  – I usually ask Google to crawl the URL and direct links.

You are now done – you have asked Google to go visit your website – this is a great habit to get into for new blog articles and fresh content on your site. The quicker you do it, the quicker Google will index the new or updated pages.