The question if one should resubmit their website if their ranking is not as high as it could be is commonly asked. The simple answer is that most cases, you should not resubmit your website once it has been indexed by a search engine. There are of course a few exceptions.
Firstly, the concern with resubmitting is that if done too often it may be seen as “spamming” which will lower a site’s ranking; yet many do feel that if major changes have been made to a site then yes, it is a good idea to resubmit. I personally don’t think this is needed in this case, but there are those who will disagree. What you can do though is submit individual URLs in most cases. So for example, if your primary URL www.mysite.com was submitted, and you find after a few months that some key pages are not being indexed, such as www.mysite.com/ourservices.html, then sure, you can individually submit this URL (and other important ones) to Google, and some of the other popular search engines. Always read the FAQ or Submission Guidelines though to ensure that you are complying with the submission policy.
First though, be sure that your website and/or pages are in fact not listed since in many cases a website will be indexed even if it wasn’t submitted (crawlers will search for websites). In this regard do a search for your website by the URL and read the results for the first few pages.
My suggestion for Google though is to submit the primary URL only and then utilize Webmaster Tools to ensure that your website is being indexed effectively. For example, every couple of years I’ll note a ratings dip for my website. This is not surprising since there is a great deal of competition in my market, and many of the web designers are savvy when it comes to SEO page optimization strategies (and many pay for online marketing which definitely provides them a ratings boost, albeit often temporary). Since I don’t pay for online marketing of any type, I need to be diligent about where my site’s ranking is for common search queries related to my industry. In this case I will create and resubmit an XML sitemap wherein I reindex all of my primary site pages. This, in addition to making targeted changes to the primary metatags and page content has consistently brought my ranking placement back to where it has long been, in the first few organic listings in Google.
If you are not familiar with Webmaster tools I suggest that you Google it, and learn the basics. I’ve written about it before so I will keep this part short, but know that Webmaster Tools does offer a few search traffic evaluation tools similar to what Google Analytics offers, so this is a good place to start when you are looking at making targeted corrections. The other place I suggest is going to Google AdWords and looking at their keyword tool suggestions. This will provide you a current list of the most commonly queried words for your type of business, which again is what you should be targeting for. Note that Bing also offers their own version of Webmaster tools, so be sure to check this one out as well. In both cases you will need to upload their authentication file to prove that you are the owner of your website before any tracking will begin.
Once you have defined the keywords that you need to target for you need to ensure that they are on your primary pages. As I’ve talked about on my website and in previous posts, these include the page titles, meta-description, heading tags, and readable text content that resides “above the fold”. If you do this, and your site is visually engaging enough to retain visitors for a reasonable period of time (look at your “bounce rate” to evaluate engagement) then yes, you will improve in the search rankings.
Remember, SEO is not magic (but yes, it does take time to do well), and those who constantly email you promising to get you ranked on the first page of Google yet don’t have a website (or if they do they provide no documentary evidence of their optimization techniques or case studies showing that their techniques work), and who don’t provide a legitimate phone contact number are never to be trusted.
If you do need help with SEO feel free to contact me personally. I am always pleased to help Sacramento businesses get ahead.
