You built it, you published it, and now you are waiting for people to show up. But search engines do not work that way. Google will not find your site on its own, rank it on its own, or send you traffic without a few things being in place first. The good news is that most of what matters is straightforward, free to do, and does not require any technical background. This page walks you through it in the right order, so you are not wasting time on step four before step one is done.
Connect a custom domain
If your site is still on a builder default URL like mysite.webflow.io or mysite.lovable.app, we suggest sorting this before moving on to anything else. Google treats these subdomains as part of the builder’s domain rather than yours, which means any search authority you build goes to the builder, not to you. A custom domain costs a few dollars a year and takes about an hour to set up. It is not essential to get started, but it is the foundation everything else sits on.
Submit your site to Google
Google does not automatically know your site exists. You need to tell it. Create a free Google Search Console account, verify your domain, and submit your sitemap. This is the single most important technical step for a new site and takes about 20 minutes.
Write a clear page title for every page
Your page title is the first thing Google reads to understand what a page is about. It is also what appears as the clickable link in search results. Every page needs a unique, descriptive title. The homepage title should say what you do and who you do it for. Do not leave it as the default your website builder set.
Check your site on a phone
Google ranks the mobile version of your site, not the desktop version. Open your site on your phone. If anything looks broken, overlaps, or is hard to tap, fix it before worrying about anything else. Most modern website builders handle this automatically but it is worth checking.
Write one page of real content
A website with only a homepage and an about page gives Google very little to work with. Write one page or post that answers a real question your audience has. It does not need to be long. It needs to be specific, honest, and genuinely useful. This is the starting point for everything that comes after.
What about AI search?
If you want to appear in results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews, the same foundations apply. AI search tools favour sites that are clearly structured, factually specific, and easy to crawl. Getting the basics right for Google gets you most of the way there for AI search too.
Where does your site stand right now?
Rather than guessing, use the free audit tool to check your site. Paste your URL and get a report covering the things that matter most: whether Google can find you, how your pages are titled, how fast your site loads, and whether your content is structured for AI search. It tells you what is working, what needs attention, and what to fix first.
What to do after this
Once you have worked through the steps above, the guides on this site cover each topic in more depth, including content strategy, AI search visibility, site speed, and internal linking.