Every web designer knows getting into the Google index is at the top of the priority list when launching a web-site, but some web designers find the process challenging, even tricky. The majority will probably agree the most effective type of traffic is search engine traffic. Google users, and other search engine users, depend on relevant search results to obtain the information they’re looking for – this type of traffic is the type almost all webmasters want. There’s an excellent chance that close to 70% of all web site’s traffic comes from Google or other search engines. Google usually does a good job delivering target results, so it’s probably safe to say Google is doing their job effectively.
1. Establish Backlinks, Backlinks, Backlinks
This is relatively easy. Once your site is available and ready for launch, submit the main page to social networking sites. Here are a few to consider: Digg, delicious, sphinn, forums, dofollow blog comments, and any other social link sharing sites you may be a member of. If you’re a member of a discussion forum, add your site’s link to your member profile and signature. This is a great technique to get indexed because your site’s link is placed on every page you’ve posted to on that forum. If you already possess an established and indexed site in Google already, just throw up a link to your new site from the established site. Try to avoid site wide links if possible. Backlinks (without the rel=”nofollow” tag) will present the new site and its pages to Google’s crawler – this is what we’re going for. This tells Google the site exists, and unless there’s a link to the new site on an already indexed site, Google’s bot has no way of knowing the new site exists.
2. Google Webmaster Tools Wants Your Sitemap
Once signed up to Google’s Webmaster Tools, login and add a site to your dashboard. Verify that you’re the owner by adding the special meta tag or creating a file with the filename they provide. Now that Google knows you own that site, head over to www.XML-Sitemaps.com and follow the instructions on their site. Upload the uncompressed sitemap.xml file to your site’s root directory, for example: http://www.your-domain.com/sitemap.xml. Back to the webmaster tools dashboard, under sitemaps, click add to add a sitemap for your now hopefully verified site. Sit back and let Google examine your sitemap. Check back a few hours later to make sure there weren’t any errors. Providing a sitemap lets Google know your site exists, and which pages are important.
3. Continue Building Backlinks!
Site directories are a great way to build one-way, permanent backlinks. There are hundreds of thousands of free directories available all over the Internet. Continuous, slow development of backlinks is very helpful to a site’s success. Once you’re indexed, adding backlinks will improve your chances of survival and increase traffic. Submit high quality stories or information to Digg, add them to your delicious bookmarks, even stumble your pages. The process is tedious, but until authority is established and people start naturally linking to your site, keep establishing backlinks – they can’t hurt your site.
So that’s it. Sit back and wait. Hopefully Google’s bot will visit your site via the Digg submission, or a forum signature, and start grabbing the site’s content. If your server logs show the bot as a visitor, and the bot likes what was on the site, congratulations, you’re golden.
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