Having a website is not the same as being found. They are different things, and the second does not happen by itself — you have to tell Google it exists and give it reasons to show it. None of this costs money, and nearly all of it takes an afternoon.
First: does Google know it exists?
Before changing anything, run this test. Type this into Google, exactly like this, with your domain:
site:yourdomain.co.mz
| What you see |
What it means |
| Several of your pages |
Google already knows you. The work now is appearing better, not appearing. |
| Only the home page |
It found the door and did not go in. It is missing a sitemap — see below. |
| Nothing |
Google does not know the site exists. It is the commonest case on new sites, and it is fixed in minutes. |
The step that pays most, and almost nobody takes
For a business with an address or a service area, a Google Business Profile pays more than anything else — it is what puts the business on the map and in that block of three results that appears before everything else. It is free.
| 1 |
Search for your business on Google. If an automatically created listing already appears, claim it rather than creating another.
|
|
| 2 |
Fill in everything: exact name, category, address, phone, hours and the website address. The category is one of the heaviest fields — pick the most specific one that exists, not the most general.
|
|
| 3 |
Complete whatever verification Google asks for. It is the slowest part and there is no shortcut.
|
|
| 4 |
Add real photographs — of the shop, the team, what you sell. Listings with photographs get considerably more contacts than listings without.
|
|
| 5 |
Reply to reviews, including the bad ones. A calm reply to a complaint convinces more than ten compliments.
|
|
|
Keep it alive. An updated listing appears better than a dormant one. One post a month — a new product, seasonal hours — is plenty.
|
Telling Google the site exists
The tool is called Search Console, it is Google's and it is free. It is where you see which searches bring people to the site — and what is stopping others from arriving.
| 1 |
Go to search.google.com/search-console and add your domain.
|
|
| 2 |
Prove the domain is yours. The simplest route is a TXT record in DNS — see proving the domain is yours. Done once, it serves everything Google asks of you from then on.
|
|
| 3 |
Submit the sitemap. On WordPress with an SEO plugin, the address is usually /sitemap_index.xml or /sitemap.xml.
|
|
| 4 |
Come back a week later. The data takes time to appear, and returning the next day only gives the impression it did not work.
|
|
|
This is where you discover what is broken. Search Console tells you, by name, which pages Google tried to read and could not — server errors, redirect loops, pages blocked by mistake. It is information that exists nowhere else, and it is free.
|
Knowing whether anyone visits
Worth saying plainly: most of the sites we host have no way at all of measuring visits. That means spending money on a site without knowing whether it does anything.
There are two ways, and they are not rivals:
| Where |
What it gives |
| cPanel statistics |
Already there, nothing to install and no cookies. They show visits, pages and where people come from — see monitoring performance in cPanel |
| Google Analytics |
Considerably more detail, but it is third-party code tracking your visitors — and that brings obligations: the cookie notice and consent |
The basics, worth more than tricks
| 1 |
A different title on every page, saying what the page is and where the business is. «Home» on every page is the commonest fault we see.
|
|
| 2 |
Write the name of the city you serve. People search with the name of the place.
|
|
| 3 |
The site has to open quickly on a phone, which is where nearly everyone searches — see the site is slow.
|
|
|
Be wary of anyone promising first place. Position in the natural results cannot be bought, and nobody can guarantee it — not even us. What works is boring and slow: a complete listing, a fast site, pages that answer real questions, and time. Anyone guaranteeing you first place in a fortnight is selling you something else.
|
|
Want us to confirm whether Google is reading your site?
Talk to us
|
RECOMMENDED PRODUCT Web hosting with cPanel Domain and SSL included, daily backups and the panel you already know. from $10.00/mo See plans |
Português
English
