A brand new website doesn't get discovered by accident. Publishing it isn't the finish line, it's the moment Google has never heard of you yet. Here's the exact sequence I run through the day a site goes live, no shortcuts, no paid tricks, just the real groundwork.
Tell Google the site exists
Google Search Console verifies you actually own the domain, then lets you submit a sitemap, a single file listing every real page on the site. Without this, Google finds a new site by chance, eventually. With it, you're handing Google the map directly instead of waiting to be stumbled on.
Structured data, not just words on a page
A page full of good copy still leaves Google guessing at what a business actually is. A small block of structured data (Schema.org markup) states it plainly: this is a business, here's its name, here's what it does, here's how to contact it. It's a few lines of code most visitors never see, and it's the difference between Google inferring your business and Google knowing it.
Clean URLs, not a mess of file extensions
A URL like a site's homepage should read as a name, not a filename. Every real site I build gets restructured into clean folder-based URLs before launch, not because it looks nicer, but because Google and every person sharing a link treats it more seriously.
Real backlinks, earned honestly
A backlink is another real site vouching for yours. The most honest, immediate one available to me: every client site I build now credits "Site by Alastair Banwell" in its own footer, linking back here. It's a real, relevant link from a real, live business, not a bought placement on a spam directory.
A sitemap and a canonical URL that actually agree with each other
A domain that redirects `yoursite.com` to `www.yoursite.com` (or vice versa) needs every canonical tag and sitemap entry to point at the exact version that's actually live. Missing this is a genuinely common, easy-to-miss mistake, mismatched URLs quietly confuse search engines about which version is the real one.
None of this is exciting. It's also not optional. A beautifully designed site that skips this groundwork is invisible to the exact people searching for it.
Getting found is only half the job, see what actually makes a small business website convert once people land on it, or check the Pricing page for how this all fits together.
None of this applies if you have no site to get found in the first place. Worth reading why a listing on someone else's site is not the same thing.
And before any of this is worth the effort, it is worth checking Google has your pages at all. Here is how to find out in about two minutes, and why half of mine were missing.