With so many websites (new and existing) screaming “Find Me”, how do you stand out from them when it comes to getting search engines like Google to notice your website? Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to quicken Googlebot’s crawl.
What’s Googlebot?
Googlebot is just a fancy name for Google’s automated program (aka spider) whose main job is to discover and fetch (crawl to) new and updated pages from websites. Once they have done so, the page will be indexed for searches by Google’s users. Sounds easy enough? Well, it’s slightly more complicated than that… but let’s leave the details for a later day.
What you need to know is that Google does not always index all the pages they crawl to and often, it takes awhile before a website is indexed. This then brings us to the question of how to escalate the indexing of your website.
Can That Be Done? How?
Yes, it is possible to get Google to index your website quickly. Here are some effective ways which you may want to give it a try.
Tip #1: Submit URLs to Google with Fetch as Googlebot
Google has a awesome feature that allow you to submit new and updated URLs to Google for indexing. According to Google, your new site or page would usually be crawled to within 24 hours, should you use this method.
How it works?
Step 1:
Signup for a Webmaster Tools account and get it to add and verify your website.
Step 2:
Click on “Fetch as Googlebot” and request Googlebot to fetch your site.
Step 3:
If Googlebot is able to fetch your site, then you can proceed to Submit to Google Index.
Note that Google does not guarantee that your URL would definitely be indexed though. Should your site falls into this minority group, there are always other methods, which we will discuss shortly.
Tip #2: Create Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file which lists down all the pages of your website. Kind of like a contents page if you will. It is viewed as fairly important because it informs Google about the changes you made to your website. This is especially so if you were to make frequent changes eg adding new products and posting new articles daily.
Creating a sitemap is easy peasy these days with sitemap plugins. One such plugin is the Google XML Sitemaps. Downloaded over 8 million times, this popular plugin helps generates and updates an XML sitemap of your website automatically.For blogger bolog
Tip #3: Take Advantage of Social Media
With social media being the craze these days, you should jump onto the social media bandwagon too. Open a new account or update your existing account with links to your website. Create a presence on Facebook and Twitter, share your contents on Google+, pin images of some of your posts onto your Pinterest account, upload an introductory video to YouTube and so on.
Remember to link to your website. The more links you have, the more awareness you generate and the faster Google (and other search engines) crawl to your website!
Tip #4: Blog Submissions
Try submitting your feed to blog directories like Technorati. It will expose your blog to a wider audience. But of course, you need to keep those articles coming on your blog!
You can also submit your blog to blog communities like Blog Catalog. Not only will you find other web owners who share your thoughts and ideas but you also get a traffic boost from the community. Just remember to tag your blog with all relevant tags.
