SEO Basics: Getting Found in Search. Where Do I Start?-073

Season #3 November 11, 2026

You've built a website for your business, but how do you make sure people can actually find it on Google? And what happens when your website isn't showing up in search results, even though you know it's there?

This month on the SEO Day Podcast, we're going Back to SEO Basics, breaking down the fundamentals of search engine optimization so entrepreneurs and small business owners can better understand how to make their businesses visible and findable online.

In Episode 073, hosts Kim White and Denise Millet continue the series by answering five practical questions about getting your website discovered by Google, understanding why your pages may not appear in search results, and taking the first steps toward attracting more website visitors.

We're talking about how Google finds websites, how to check whether your pages are indexed, what might prevent your business from showing up in search, and what you can do to improve your online visibility. We'll also explore an important question: What makes Google see your website as a credible, helpful source of information?

Whether you've just launched your first website, have been online for years but aren't getting much traffic, or simply want to understand how Google search works, this episode will help you identify where to start and what to focus on next. Because here's the thing:

Having a website doesn't automatically mean people can find it. SEO helps connect your business with the people who are searching for what you offer.

5 SEO Questions We Answer in This Episode

How do I get my website on Google?
Why isn't my website showing up on Google?
How can I tell if Google has found my website?
How can I get more people to visit my website?
What makes Google trust a website?

What You'll Take Away From This Episode

Getting found on Google doesn't have to feel like a mystery. While search engines use complex systems to discover, understand, and rank websites, there are practical steps every business owner can take to make their website easier to find.

The key is understanding the difference between simply having a website, having your pages included in Google's search index, and having your content appear when potential customers search for relevant information. In this episode, we'll explore how to:
Help Google discover your website by understanding the basics of crawling, indexing, and search visibility.
identify common reasons your website isn't appearing in search and recognize which issues may need attention.
Check your website's indexing status using tools that show whether Google has discovered and indexed your pages.
Attract more relevant website visitors by creating helpful content that answers your audience's questions and supports their needs.
Build website credibility through accurate information, clear business details, useful content, and a trustworthy online experience.

One important thing to remember: Getting your website indexed by Google is not the same as ranking at the top of search results. And while you can take steps to help Google discover your pages, indexing and rankings are never guaranteed.

SEO is an ongoing process of making your website easier for search engines to understand and more valuable for the people you want to reach.

The goal isn't just to show up on Google. It's to show up for the right searches so potential customers can discover your business, understand what you offer, and take the next step toward working with you.

Keep Moving Forward with The Momentum Builders Circle Learning something new is exciting. But turning what you learn into action—and keeping that progress going—is what creates meaningful results. That's where The Momentum Builders Circle comes in.

The Momentum Builders Circle is designed to help you build momentum for the personal, professional, and business initiatives that matter most to you. Whether you're improving your website, launching a new project, developing your skills, growing your business, or working toward a personal goal, building momentum means taking intentional steps that move you forward. It's about creating the focus, consistency, and encouragement that help you move beyond ideas and into action.

You don't have to accomplish everything at once. You just need to keep making progress on the things that matter.

If you're ready to stop putting important goals on the back burner and start building meaningful momentum, explore The Momentum Builders Circle.

Ready to Get Your Business Found?

Join the SEO Roadmap Workshop! Now that you're learning how Google discovers websites and what influences your visibility in search, you may be wondering: Where should I start with SEO for my own business? That's exactly what the SEO Roadmap Workshop is designed to help you answer.

Created for entrepreneurs and business owners, the SEO Roadmap Workshop helps take the guesswork and overwhelm out of search engine optimization by guiding you through the steps to improve your website's visibility and findability. Instead of randomly trying SEO tips, chasing every algorithm update, or wondering why your website isn't attracting visitors, you'll learn how to identify opportunities and build a practical plan that makes sense for your business.

The SEO Roadmap Workshop helps you:

Understand how potential customers search for businesses like yours.
Identify opportunities to make your website easier for Google and potential customers to find.
Recognize which SEO fundamentals need attention on your website.
Prioritize improvements that support your business goals.
Create a manageable roadmap for making steady progress with SEO.

You don't need to become an SEO expert to reap the benefits of SEO. You need a clear understanding of where you are, where you want to go, and the steps that can help you get there.

Join the SEO Roadmap Workshop and start building a stronger foundation for online visibility, findability, and long-term business growth.

The SEO Day Podcast helps entrepreneurs and small business owners understand SEO, improve their online visibility, and make their businesses easier to find—one question at a time.

Episode Transcript

Episode 073 - Getting Found in Search - Where do I start_
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[00:00:00] Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen, Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur whisperer, Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered.

Denise is on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content they spend hours creating included in search engines, so when their customers search online, they're findable because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you.

So stay tuned. The fun starts now

Welcome to SEO Day Podcast Studio. I'm Kim White, and I'm joined by Denise Millet, the Findability Queen. Hi, Denise. Hi, Kim. So glad to be here with you today. Thank you for helping me out. Well, I'm excited about this month's topic. We're going back to the basics with [00:01:00] SEO. Mm-hmm. So it's very, very exciting because you've created a website, but how do you make sure people can actually find it?

In this episode, we're going to explain how Google and other search engines discover websites, why some pages don't appear in search results, and what you can do to improve your visibility. We'll cover practical steps, or should I say Denise will cover practical steps you can take even if you're not comfortable with technology.

Let's get started with question one. How do I get my website on Google? Excellent question, and just so everybody can understand, there are two ways. Google often discovers websites automatically by just following links as it's reading the internet. So if your website is, say, on a large platform like mine is, like Kajabi, it's already there reading other [00:02:00] Kajabi sites, so it would probably encounter mine and read it.

But everybody should help that out by setting up the Google Search Console tool by submitting a sitemap, and there are instructions out there on all the major platforms about how to do that and how to verify your site. And then you make sure your website is publicly accessible, it isn't blocked by search engines, and you have clear descriptions of your business, your service, and your products.

So it's a really beneficial thing to do, and there are instructions on the Google site how to do it. All you have to do is search for Google Search Console. Well, I want to make sure that I understood what you said about one thing. It's not you're blocking or they're blocking you, it's you blocking them that you're looking for.

You- if your website is blocking the search engines is what [00:03:00] you're looking for, not the opposite, correct? Right. Okay. Um... The only reason they're gonna block you is if you do something egregious with your site, like you stuff it full of keywords that don't make sense, or you, you sell links, backlinks, and you're just a link broker, and you do things that are considered not good business.

Then they might block you, but they ra- they don't do that for normal humans who are just doing business out there. But going to Google Search Console just gives them a directive that says, "This is a new site. It's live. It's for my business. I own it. Please read it and put it into your library." It might happen automatically, but it's good for you to do it as part of your business setup.

Thank you for clarifying. So question number two, why isn't my website showing up in Google? If [00:04:00] I find that out, why, why? Well, your website might be new, and it hasn't been read and indexed yet. So, there could be technical issues that prevent Google from finding or understanding its pages. It depends where you host your website, whether it's easy for it to discover or not.

but Google, by doing the Google Search Console setup process and submitting your site to Google, you can make sure it gets read and indexed, and you can track its progress. So The other problem is if it's out there but it's not doing well, not all your pages are showing up, it could be that you don't have help- your content isn't helpful enough, or you don't have clear keywords that make it useful.

so you might need stronger signals to make it more valuable content for the search engine. [00:05:00] So there are a few different things, but the first step is checking on the Search Console, making sure you submitted it properly and got it out there. Well, I have to say, we're both on Kajabi and we love Kajabi, so if anyone wants to have that conversation, let us know.

Right. Right. Question number three: How do I know if Google has found my pages? And we're gonna go back to this. Use the free Google Search Console tool to see which pages are indexed, they call it, or read, and whether Google has noted any problems as it was reading them, because they'll give you errors if there are any.

you can also search Google yourself, in an incognito window, which is helpful so it won't store that search, so it won't impact what you see in the future. So in an [00:06:00] incognito search, search for your website name, see what comes up, and you can also use this command they call site, S-I-T-E colon, and then, your name, your website name, and it'll give you a list of a lot of links that are out there for your site.

But I would search with your website name first in incognito window and you'll get just as good results. It's very exciting, I think. Very empowering, I will just say. So this episode is sponsored by the Momentum Builders Circle, where entrepreneurs get the structure, the support, the accountability, and the smart business strategy they need to turn their ideas into consistent action and real results in just seven weeks.

Come experience true momentum with us inside the circle. The link is in the show notes. So back to the questions. Question number four: How do [00:07:00] I get more visitors to my website? Okay. First step is you would create content that answers questions your ideal customers are already searching for, especially questions related to your services or your expertise.

So you have to think about what their language is that they might be using sitting at the keyboard doing a search. If you can think of those words and put those words into the big main pieces of a piece of page or a piece of content like the title, the descriptions, and some of the headings. If you use those, what we call keywords, they can potentially be used to answer someone who types them in.

It's kind of that simple, complex simple. but that is the basic connection is what is someone typing into search? Can you deliver the [00:08:00] answer to that and using the words they might use to type in? And it also has to be helpful and useful. It can't be thin content that's, given generic from an AI or something like that.

You have to really deliver because you think about all the competition out there that's putting content out. Well, you have to give something that's unique to you and unique enough that it stands out as being valuable Great answer. So question number five, what makes Google trust a website?

Well, that's a great question too, because trust is a big factor. It's helpful, useful, trustworthy. Google looks for signals of helpful, reliable content, such as first-hand experience. if you're talking about something but it's not part of your business in anything that you sell or serve or participate in, nowadays everything's connected, so it can find all those [00:09:00] things out.

It's not just looking at the one page to decide to serve it up. It's looking at many different factors when it decides what to do with your content. So if you have experience in something and then you're writing about it, then that's just phenomenal. You know? So that makes you more trustworthy because you're real.

And if you have clear information about your business, you have to have an address, you have to have a website address, you have to have pictures and all the things that prove you're a real person, especially even in this day of AI. You wanna be a real person, and so if you share things about, communities you're in, or people you talk to, or interviews or podcast interviews, or you produce a podcast or videos, those things all add up to being, you being a real person and being much more having social proof that you exist and that you do this business.

I think you also [00:10:00] build credibility by explaining who you are, sharing your expertise, keeping your information accurate on your site and updated, up-to-date and fresh. They like fresh content. They don't like something you put out two, three years ago. They wanna know that you're still doing it before they share what you currently have out there, because if you're no longer in that business, why would they do that?

You're not an authority. You're not credible for them. Something else that helps is if you have links out of your site to other sites or to other things within your site that are the same topic of content, that supports you being more credible and more of an authority in what you're talking about.

If people are linking back to you from their sites as a reference, that's also very helpful. Not absolutely required, but it definitely gives you a leg up. Great [00:11:00] information. Thank you. I'm glad that you appreciate it, Kim. It's a hard topic sometimes to really get your hands around, but it's not. If you think about it, about who you trust in your life, what are the things you look at to know if you're trustworthy, and convert that to the online world and try to get that kind of understanding, I think you can implement this.

And hey, if this episode helped you, listening at all, if it had a nugget or two that moved you along in your SEO understanding, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur or business owner who might be trying to use SEO and trying to grasp an understanding of all this stuff. So please share it.

I love it. Yes, please subscribe and follow the show. It, it really does matter, and it helps us to know, that you're out there and that it is helpful. The Findability Queen herself has suggested making Tuesdays [00:12:00] your SEO day, because that's the day that the podcast drops. So if you set aside some time on your calendar, it, and implement some of the things that Denise is talking about, it is such a valuable thing and such a valuable time.

But subscribing is free, so we just want you to know that's a great way to help us back to know that we are, hitting the right topics that you wanna hear. So thank you for being here with us. See you next time

Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion.

Follow the show so you can hear when new episodes get released and stay in the know about SEO. Until next time

SEO Basics: Getting Found in Search. Where Do I Start?-073

5 SEO Questions We Answer in This Episode

What You'll Take Away From This Episode

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