How I make my site searchable in 2 minutes

#webdev #beginners

Your site will not magically show up on Google unless you help search engines to find it.

So, let’s fix that.

Basic SEO

First things first, in your HTML, add these lines of code in the <head> tag:

<title>My Awesome Site</title>
<meta name="description" content="This summarizes serves as an example. Use this wisely.">
<meta name="keywords" content="coding, youtube">
<meta name="author" content="Your Name">

This helps Google understand your content better, plus that's what it shows in Google search page when you look it up.

Next, if someone shares your site on Discord, Twitter, or LinkedIn — these control how it looks.

Add these lines as well.

<meta property="og:title" content="My Awesome Site" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Check out this cool project I built!" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://yourdomain.com/preview.png" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://yourdomain.com" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />

While, they're not mandatory, who doesn't like extra SEO boost, right?

Now, add a basic favicon so your site looks legit in tabs:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

Also, without one, sites often don't look authentic.

And, lastly, add this line to ensure your site doesn't break on phones, because without it Google will dock points for it.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Advanced SEO

That's pretty much it, but if you want go an extra mile, we can generate a sitemap and add it to Google Search console.

If you're using Vite, install this plugin first in the terminal:

npm i vite-plugin-sitemap

Then in your vite.config.js, add these lines:

import Sitemap from 'vite-plugin-sitemap';
plugins: [Sitemap()]

Which, should give you a sitemap.xml at the root. That’s what Google looks for.

Next, go to Google Search console and link your domain. Here, you need to confirm that you actually own your domain. If you're using Namecheap & Netlify to host your website, all you have to do is copy the TXT value provided by Google search console and add it to the Netlify as a new DNS record.