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I am a researcher and have made a new webpage using R studio that I'm more or less happy with. Trouble is I cannot seem to 'find' it when I google it (even though I know what I'm looking for). I imagine if I can't find it, nobody else will.

For the web-techies out there - am I missing something to make my website searchable, so that it comes up when someone googles my name? What can I do to make this come up at least in the top page or two?

Note: I have an old webpage with google sites that has the opposite issue - it keeps coming up in search even though I no longer want to use it. I've kept it with the link to the newer site until I see the new one coming up in searches.

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  • This is unfortunately too broadly scoped, and we don't do individual SEO reviews here. The questions marked as a duplicate should help, along with the answer below. – dan♦ Aug 29 '18 at 5:16
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    Thanks @dan I didn't see anything resembling my query but my lack of background likely explains that (didn't even know what SEO stood for before googling!). Those links should help - thanks and apologies for the duplicate. – Calen Aug 29 '18 at 20:08
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It takes time for Google to crawl, cache, understand, and index a new site.

As your old site was on one of Google's platforms, that probably happens automatically - or perhaps more quickly.

You can probably help speed up indexing by:

  1. Adding a sitemap.xml file;
  2. Attaching the site to a search console with a GA script;
  3. Using Search Console to submit the sitemap.

Even then it can take some time - Google literally has Billions of pages to crawl and process every day. It really is a waiting game.

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  • Thanks @TBB. Just knowing that there is something called a "sitemap.xml" file gives me something to ask about in the github pages forum (and whether or not it's already in my build). Literally had no place to even begin, so I very much appreciate yours and dan's help. – Calen Aug 29 '18 at 20:12

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