How to get your website found on Google: 9 steps for a site nobody finds

You get your website found on Google in three phases. First you make sure Google can read your site and includes it. Then you create a page per service that says what you do and where. After that you improve a little every week. Most sites that are not found already stumble in the first phase. That is good news, because that phase takes an hour.

“I have a nice website, but nobody finds it.” It almost always comes down to the same five causes. I will go through those first, then the nine steps.

First: is your website in Google at all?

Type this into the Google search bar, with your own domain:

site:yourdomain.com

You now see every page Google knows from your site. There are three possible outcomes.

You see nothing. Google does not know your site, or is not allowed to include it. Start at steps 1 and 2.

You see a few pages, but not all. Google knows your site, but finds part of it not worth including or cannot reach it. Start at steps 2 and 3.

You see everything. Your site is in Google. It just is not shown for the searches you want. Start at step 4.

Why isn’t a website found? The five causes

Cause	How to recognize it	Step
Google does not know your site yet	site: shows nothing, the site is new	1
A setting keeps Google out	site: shows nothing, the site has existed for a while	2
Too little text per page	Pages with only photos and a phone number	4 and 5
Titles say nothing	Your pages are called “Home”, “Services”, “About us”	6
Too much competition for the word	You target “painter” instead of “painter in Columbus”	4

Step 1: add your site to Google Search Console

Search Console is free and made by Google. It shows which pages Google knows, which searches you appear for and how often people click.

Go to search.google.com/search-console and add your domain. Google asks you to prove the site is yours. Your web developer or hosting company can set that up in five minutes. Then submit your sitemap: a list of all your pages. On WordPress it is usually at /sitemap_index.xml or /wp-sitemap.xml.

Without Search Console you work blind. With it, you know where you stand within a week.

Step 2: check that Google is allowed in

This is the most common mistake on sites that are not found at all. During the build, the developer locks the site so Google does not index the half-finished version. At launch, they forget to remove the lock.

In WordPress it is under Settings, Reading. Is “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checked under “Search engine visibility”? Uncheck it.

On another system, ask your developer to check two things: the robots.txt file and the noindex setting. In Search Console, under Pages, you also see why a page was not included.

Step 3: choose one address for your site

Your site can often be reached in four ways: with and without www, with http and with https. To Google those are four different sites, unless three of them redirect to the fourth.

Type all four into your browser. Do you always end up at the same address, with a padlock? Then you are fine.

Step 4: choose words you can win

A painting company in Columbus that wants to be found for “painter” competes with the whole country. For “painter Columbus” with thirty companies. For “wood rot repair Columbus” with four.

Write down what customers ask on the phone. Those are your keywords. For a painter, for example:

• exterior painting Columbus
• cost to paint window trim
• wood rot repair
• painter for HOA buildings

The more specific the question, the fewer people search for it and the easier it is to reach the top. Making a list is fastest with keyword research with AI. Ten of those questions together bring more customers than one big word where you sit on page 6.

Step 5: create one page per service

This is the step where you win the most. Many sites have one “Services” page with a list. Google cannot show such a page well for anything, because it is about everything at once.

Create a separate page for each service. On that page you put:

• what you do, in the first two sentences
• where you do it: your city and the towns around it
• roughly what it costs, or what the price depends on
• how it works, in a few steps
• three or four questions customers ask, with the answers

The painting company had one page with eight services. Now it has eight pages. The “Wood rot repair” page has 400 words, two photos of their own work and a price range per window. Google can now show that page to someone searching for exactly that.

Step 6: give every page a title that says what it is

The title is the blue line in Google. It decides whether someone clicks. “Services | Smith Painting” says nothing. “Wood rot repair in Columbus: price per window | Smith Painting” says everything.

Put the keyword first, add your city and stay under 60 characters. How to do that for every page is in the article about the SEO title. The line below it in Google is the meta description.

Step 7: complete your Google Business Profile

For local businesses this is at least as important as the website. The Business Profile is the block with your address, hours and reviews that appears on the right in Google and in Google Maps.

Fill in everything: category, services, service area, photos. Ask every happy customer for a review. A profile with forty reviews beats a profile with three, even when the website is weaker. More on being found locally is in GEO for local businesses.

Step 8: get other sites to mention you

Google trusts a site more when other sites link to it. You do not need a campaign for that. Start with the obvious:

• your trade association
• your suppliers and partners
• the local chamber of commerce
• sponsoring a youth sports team

Four or five such mentions already make a difference for a local business. Where your competitors are mentioned you find with an SEO competitor analysis.

Step 9: improve one thing every week

This is the step most business owners skip. The site is done, so the work is done. But your competitors do keep improving their sites.

Look in Search Console every week. Find a page with many impressions and few clicks. Give it a better title. Add a link to it from two other pages. The full approach is in how to improve your SEO.

No time for that? There are two routes. An agency does it for you, which quickly costs more than a thousand dollars a month. Or you let software do it.

Can this be automated?

Steps 1 through 8 you do once. No software needed, just a free afternoon.

Step 9 never ends. That is exactly the work software can take over well. It scans your site every week, picks the pages that almost rank and improves the title, the description and the links. On a WordPress site it publishes those changes itself.

What you do and do not hand off is in automating SEO with AI. Want a full picture of what is wrong on your site first? Do an SEO audit.

How fast do you see results?

You are found for your own business name within a few weeks. For a service plus your city it often takes two to four months. Google itself says some changes take effect within hours and others take months; see the Google SEO starter guide. What to expect when, per phase, is in how long SEO takes.

And findable in ChatGPT?

A growing share of your customers no longer ask Google but ChatGPT. “Which painter in Columbus is good with wood rot?” The answer names two or three businesses.

The steps above help there too. A page per service with a clear answer is exactly what an AI assistant can read. What comes on top are your reviews and mentions on other sites. How that works is in why isn’t my business in ChatGPT.

See why your site is not found

Join the waitlist. Your free report shows which issues we find on your site, which pages have no title or description, and whether ChatGPT mentions you or your competitor. Then you know which step to start with.