We launched our site this week so we definitely know how exciting a time it can be; it’s your time to shine on the internet after weeks or months of hard work.

One question we’ve been asked regularly since the launch of our site is how long it takes to appear in Google searches and after that, how long it takes to rank well for the key phrases you are trying to rank for.

So we thought we’d answer it on our blog!

Lets start with how long it takes your site to appear in the Google search index.

Our own took just 17 minutes, which if you take a bit of a think about the vast nature of the internet is startlingly quick for a brand new site.  Other new sites that have not previously been included on Google can take anything up to a month or two at most to rank in the search engine.

Do you need to submit your site to Google and other search engines?

The simple answer is that you can but you don’t need to.  You can tell Google that your new website is out there by visiting http://www.google.co.uk/submityourcontent/website-owner/

That said, Google searches the internet for content every second so it isn’t something that you have to do to ensure it appears in their index.  There are other areas that you can use to increase the indexibility of your site and we’ll cover these in a future post.

How do you check if your site is appearing in Google?

You can check if your site is indexed in Google by simply putting your website address into the search box e.g. www.mihidigital.co.uk

If you want to check as and when new pages you add to the site are indexed you can simply put the exact web address for that page into the search engines.  Another helpful feature of Google is the “search tools” tab, which will allow you see what has been indexed within a certain period of time.  For example, we could take a look at all of the search results that have been added to Google for the term “MiHi Digital” in the past 24 hours.

This way you know exactly where you are being mentioned, where your content is being published, as well as when you pages are being added.

How long to rank for your key phrases?

This will depend very much on the competitiveness of the search term in question.  Unfortunately, you can’t really expect instant success and number one rankings overnight if you are launching a new website.  Other sites will have the trust of Google built up over a number of years, they’ll have links from other websites which can be difficult to gain when you first set up, and they’ll likely have more content.

Having a longer term view and integrated strategy on how you tackle this going forward will be a key to minimising the time it takes to compete and the levels you can gain.

For more information on how we can help you build, launch and increase the search engine indexibility and rankings of a website please give us a call or drop us an email on hello@mihidigital.co.uk