How to get your site indexed by Google

Everyone wants to be ranked well on Google, but the first step to do that is for your site be indexed. As a real estate SEO coach and web developer with hundreds of sites, I felt like it was time to put an end to some of the rampant mythology out there about indexing, crawling, ranking, and the all-too-misunderstood "search engine submission." Yeah, I know, what a scam!

As a real estate SEO consultant, I can't tell you how many times someone has called me, freaking out, about how their site is not getting indexed. I go to Google and check, and sure enough, it's fully indexed. It's just not ranking well for the keywords they expect it rank for.

Ranking vs. Indexing

There is a huge difference between getting ranked and getting indexed by Google, Yahoo!, or Bing (the only three search engines most of you need to worry about). The difference is simple. If your site (i.e., the home page and many, if not all, of your site's individual pages), is in Google's database of pages, your site is indexed. When you search for a keyword phrase and your site shows up as one of the organic search results (I'll explain organic vs. sponsored links in a minute), that means your site is ranking for those keywords.

It's important not to confuse the two terms. To see if your site is indexed on Google, just go to Google and type the following into the search box:

• site:yourdomain.com

What you'll see is a list of all the pages on your site that Google has in its index. If your site is there, your site is indexed. Perhaps not all pages are indexed, and I'll explain how to optimize the chances of getting all your pages indexed next.

Step 1: Create a sitemap

A sitemap is an XML formatted text document that very simply tells a search engine about the existence of each page on your site and a few other tidbits of information about each page. You can technically specify the "weight" (or importance) you assign to each page, and give Google a suggestion as to how often the page should be visited for updates.

There is a wide variety of sitemap creation software out there. Many are free. I use one call iGooSitemap (I know, weird name) for the Mac. Make sure you upload it to your site (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml is the normal location and name).

Step 2: Submit it to Google's Webmasters Tools

This is very easy. No submitting your site to spammers and "site submission" companies. Just go directly to Google and enter your site into your control panel:

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Step 3: Get one ore more links from a heavily crawled site

This is not essential if you don't have access to your own network of heavily crawled sites, or don't know anyone who has a blog that can link to you. It doesn't have to be a full article, nor does it need to be anything you pay for. Just a link for Google to follow while it's on it's way around the big web collecting data.

That's it. If you can't get a link, don't worry too much about it. You'll still get indexed by Googlebot, it may just take a week or two. If you're linked on another highly crawled site like a blog, it can sometimes be shortened to one day.

Now that you're indexed, what about ranking?

Getting ranked is another thing entirely, and is too complex a topic to deal with in this post. However, the short summary of what you need to do is right here. Just follow these tips, and you'll do fine:

• Choose targeted, niche keywords. You'll get ranked faster if you have multiple niche sites than if you have one big-mama site with all your content there.
• Get links pointing to your site with specific niche keywords in the anchor text.
• Produce good quality content that people like to link to and read.

Good luck...and if you need specific help with your SEO campaign, give me a call:

Kevin Harper
(208) 249-8893