Hey, where's my site?
posted Apr 22, 2010 4:01am
There are a few steps between registering your domain name and your site being accessible to the public.
Getting yer Google on
So you want to be findable, eh? Well, this is an involved topic but I’ll try to keep it to the basics.
Google finds your site a number of ways. Mainly, they follow a link to your site from another site —a site Google already knows about. Or, you let Google know you exist by submitting your site to them here. The more links to your site from other sites and the better your content is on your own site—the easier you’ll be to find.
So when Google or any other search engine finds you, what is it going to say in their listing? That depends.
The content of their search results comes first from your page’s meta tag description. (Note: If you have someone working on your site that doesn’t know what that is, that’s not a good sign). if you don’t have that filled in the search engine will instead use the first content it finds on the page—relevant or not.
If your site’s main page is just decorative, there won’t be any content for them to work with and this won’t help your “findability”—so you really should make sure your meta tag description is filled in.