How long before I am found?

**Ordway** · 26 November 2016, 12:59 AM

I just completed a website for our church, victorytrintylutheranchurch.org , and have been online about a week now. How long is it before I should expect to be located in a search. I filled in all the data in Website Properties for both "Website Tab" and "Page Tab". I am using Premium 12 and am hosted on Godaddy.

I really expected to be find-able by now as according to the web reports I have been visited by both Bing and Google bots.

I would appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks

**Egg Bramhill** · 26 November 2016, 02:04 AM

Searching Google for 'victory trinity lutheran church' it comes in #12, very good for a week. I suggest you use Google Webmaster Tools to further develop your ranking as well as Google My Business and add a website link.

Oh & welcome to TG.

**Ordway** · 26 November 2016, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Searching Google for 'victory trinity lutheran church' it comes in #12, very good for a week. I suggest you use Google Webmaster Tools to further develop your ranking as well as Google My Business and add a website link.

Oh & welcome to TG.

Thanks for the quick reply. I think you probably found our Facebook page of the same name. I have searched Google, Bing and Yahoo by our church name which for all practical purposes nobody searches with that criteria -- probably more on location. But I have gone back 8 and 10 pages and don't find our site.

I will take your advise on Google but am still wondering on the "how long" and if I have the right information listed in the "website tab" and "page tab".

Thanks
Again

**roly** · 26 November 2016, 04:03 AM

Hi Ordway, I noticed in your first post that an i is missing in your link. After I added the i, your site came up right away.

Ciao

Roly

**Ordway** · 26 November 2016, 12:46 PM

Thanks for your reply Roly. That's a spelling whoops in my first post but the domain name is correct. I have not been able to get us in a search trying all the common search engines even using our full name. But actually I am more interested in being found by location. We are located in Ludington Michigan and searching on "lutheran Ludington" brings up all the other churches in town except us. So I was wondering how long it takes to get into a search engines data. I know the Google bot has visited our site a couple times. Maybe I need to be more patient but that is not one of my virtues.

**gwpriester** · 26 November 2016, 12:52 PM

I was going to answer it depends on how well you have hidden yourself but I see your question has been answered.

Welcome to TalkGraphics

**Ordway** · 26 November 2016, 01:39 PM

Hi GW

Even though Google's bots found me behind the third tree to the left they don't seem to want to tell the rest of the internet searchers where I am. I guess my question should be does it take this long to get placed in the search engines index. The CP panel's web analysis at Godaddy tells me all the finds are coming through facebook of which we have a page - so I am concerned.

Thanks for your reply

**Egg Bramhill** · 26 November 2016, 01:57 PM

No Ordway. I noticed the top listing was a facebook page. As stated earlier your url was listed #12 but on checking today it's moved up to the first page and now ranks #8. See screengrab.

Most of those above it are catolgue type sites like yell.com etc. I don't know if it's because I'm searching from the UK that your site is getting a higher listing?

See also on the side panel of the screengrab there's a Google Map. Click on Own this business text to claim it and put your website address and more on there.

Finally, Google is picking up Mission page using 'victory trinity lutheran church' as the search creteria. That's because your index page doesn't mention that full title except in the description meta tag. On the index page instead of 'HOME' replace it with 'Victory Trinity Lutheran Church', thus giving the SE bots another chance to find that term. The same wording in the header is a bitmap so SE bots can't read it.

Finally, finally, on the Early History page you have images that sit on top of the text, NOT repelling the text.

**gwpriester** · 26 November 2016, 02:52 PM

On the index page instead of 'HOME' replace it with 'Victory Trinity Lutheran Church'....

Absolutely. A strong home page title is crucial. You can have as many as 12 words.

**Ordway** · 26 November 2016, 05:07 PM

GW, Egg and Roly

Thank you soo much for your helpful responses. I am relatively new at website building having done one other site years ago with MS Publisher but this Xara Premium 12 product continues to impress me. I think I discovered a little of my search problem. I turned off Norton Safe Search in Chrome and was able to duplicate the page Egg shows in post#8. I never knew I was attending an "Un Safe" church.

I then found searching with the criteria "lutheran ludington" a site-page appeared on page5 of the search results. So I guess we are not hidden after all.

I have changed, but not uploaded yet, the word "Home" on the index page to our name this is a Heading level 2+ in the design. I also changed the page title properties to "Victory Trinity Lutheran Church located near Ludington". So maybe this will help.

I have discovered with Egg's comment that adding a frame to a picture removes the repel text tag. So I reapplied it and I think all is well again.

Thanks for all the help and it looks like I will be studying how to create a site map next.