Can Google See Your Site? The First SEO Check You Must Do

If you've just started blogging, there's a pretty good chance that your blog isn't showing up on Google.

However, if you have been putting in the work but cannot seem to show up or rank on Google, it's possible that your site is not optimized for search engines.

To get the ball rolling on fixing your site's SEO, the very first place you should check is your site's indexability and crawlability.

Think of it this way: if search engines can't find your site or can't properly explore its content, nothing else you do for SEO will really matter.

Here's what to look at.

#1 - Robots.txt file

A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of your site they are allowed or not allowed to access. You'll usually find it at the root of your domain (e.g., yourdomain.com/robots.txt).

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What to check for: Make sure you aren't accidentally disallowing important pages or your entire site. Look for lines like Disallow: / which blocks all access. Also, ensure your sitemap.xml file is referenced here (e.g., Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).

#2 - Sitemap.xml file

The sitemap.xml file is an XML file that lists all the important pages on your website. This file helps search engines discover and index pages on your site.

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What to check for: Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file and that it's up-to-date with all your current pages. You can usually submit this to search engines via their webmaster tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

#3 - Check if your site is indexed

You can do this directly in Google (or your preferred search engine) by typing site:yourdomain.com.

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What to check for: See how many pages from your site are listed. If the number seems significantly lower than the number of pages you have, it indicates indexing issues. If nothing shows up, your entire site might be blocked.

#4- Use GSC and Bing

If you haven't already, sign up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These are free web tools provided by Google and Microsoft, respectively. Think of them as control panels for your website's presence in their search engines.

They give you insights into how search engines see your site, including coverage reports, crawl status, and sitemap submission, to name a few. You can see which pages are indexed, which have errors, and why some pages might not be indexed.

Conclusion

Just remember that this whole thing--SEO, blogging, rankings, the Google updates—it's a journey. It will be continuous learning and refinement, so don't feel bad or discouraged if you don't see results overnight. Take the time to get this right, and you'll be building a solid platform for your voice to be heard.

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