The Problem
You've released your site to the world, but it's been a few weeks and still Google is showing your GoDaddy Parked Domain page.
Why won't Google update?
Google is slow, particularly on new, untrusted sites.
In my experience, it can take easily 30 to 60 days for it to get around to a new site, and even then it will index like 30% of it if you're lucky.
Why? Well, look at the Internet through Google's eyes.
Google sees a LOT of new stuff every day, and it has no idea if your site is relevant. What makes your site different from www.buy-spam-crap-now.com?
Google sees a lot of junk, and has to make tough decisions on where Googlebot should spend its time crawling and indexing content.
It also must carefully choose what should appear in its search results, or else they become muddied and useless.
Adjust Your Expectations
First, read, and understand, my 4 Laws of SEO.
The Solution: Make Google's Job Easier
Help Google Find Your Site
This part is pretty straightfoward;
- Setup Google Search Console and verify your site.
- Submit your /sitemap.xml to GSC.
Now, start building backlinks, from other sites, to yours.
Making your site visible to the world directly, through other sites, also makes it visible to Google. And it adds relevance too.
- Put your site in business directories, on other sites
- Link to it from social media
- Write a blog, news, press releases, product specials, share them with links back to your site
Time to grind.
Help Google Make Sense of Your Site
Do your basic SEO;
- Choose a good, meaningful domain if possible
- Choose good, and descriptive page titles
- Have good page META descriptions
- Use good slugs in your URLs names
Make Your Site Relevant to the World
Why should people visit you? What benefit do they get?
- Create value, continually- especially in the form of good content published regularly.
Go Deeper into SEO Strategy
Read up on Google's current best practices for SEO.
Get techie if you want, reading Search Engine Journal.
Best Practices
A better practice is to eliminate that parking page from the beginning.
You want to get your domain pointing to a Webflow-hosted coming-soon page as soon as possible.
Why?
- You get to do early-SEO
- > A decent page TITLE
- > A META Description
- Client confidence
- > Your client can begin using the domain name, e.g. printing business cards, letterhead, car wraps, with confidence that the domain is real.
- > If your client's customers see that domain name before it's launched, they still get a good experience
- You can engage customers early
- > Add a "want to be notified when we launch?" email newsletter sign up. Then tell everyone when you launch.
Technical References
Understanding the Google Crawl Budget.
Why GoogleBot Doesn’t Crawl Enough Pages on Some Sites
Search Engine Journal
Google SEO 101: Website Crawl Budget Explained
Search Engine Journal
Google uses things like ETags, HTTP headers, and last modified dates to determine how often content should be crawled.
How Search Engines Crawl & Index: Everything You Need To Know
FAQs
Answers to frequently asked questions.
