The Writing Geek

On October 19th, I registered my new domain name. Of course, because it was new, there was no reference to it in the Google databases. I knew, however, that if I wanted the chance to REALLY grow my traffic, I would need to be indexed by Google.

In most cases, it takes quite some time to get indexed. If you do nothing other than post to your blog, you may see it show up a month to three months down the road. In the meantime, you are at the whim of the Internet traffic gods, and most likely no one will be reading your blog.

Here is how I got my blog indexed by Google in just 2 days:

1. QUALITY, QUALITY, QUALITY

When I moved my blog from the Blogger platform to my own domain, I took the best posts I had at my old Blogspot address and posted them individually on the new site. This provided some instant content, and quality content at that. Of course, in addition to quality content, I have always tried to design my posts in such a way as to include plenty of keywords, while keeping the posts useful to readers. The better quality content you have, the better your chances of ranking high in search results.

2. THE KING OF PING

Once I had all of my old content transferred, I went right over to Technorati.com and used their “Ping Us” service to notify them that updates had been made. In addition to Technorati, I also went to Ping-O-Matic and used their service to ping a bunch of other blog directories. Pinging these services lets them know that you have new content on your blog. They will then send out a robot or ’spider’ to crawl your site and pick up that new content. When the spider begins to see a pattern in your keywords, the service will begin serving your site, among others, in various search results.

3. IT PAYS TO BE SOCIAL

Social networking sites are becoming extremely popular, and there’s a reason. Websites such as Digg.com are extremely valuable to the blogger, and allow others to see your posts or articles on a faster basis than they would through a search service such as Google.

There are actually two ways to use social networking sites. First, you can add individual articles to them. In the case of Digg.com, you “digg” your articles. Then, if other members of the site like what they read, they can “digg” the article as well, boosting its popularity. While some more popular articles get hundreds of “diggs”, some only get a few. The most I have received for any one article is 3 “diggs”, but it still works, and it lets me know folks are reading my stuff.

Second, when you join such a site, you have the opportunity to create a profile. Your network profile allows you to add links, and shows your previous “diggs”. Like the popular networking site MySpace.com, other members can then contact you through your profile, see what you have been up to in the blogosphere and even add you to their own network of friends. As you can see, using a social networking site can go a long way in promoting your work.

In case you were wondering, you can see my Digg.com profile at:

http://www.digg.com/users/wvfreelancer

4. LIST YOUR BLOG

Once I had pinged and dugg, I started adding my blog to a few blog directories. In just two days, I have watched quite a bit of traffic come from these services. Not only that, but I know my link is now on their site. In most cases, these sites have a higher popularity with Google or are already being crawled by the Googlebot, so your link will be found in a fairly short amount of time. The directories I use include:

BlogCatalog.com
BlogRankings.com
BlogListing.net

5. SHOW SOME LOVE…

Now that everything is up and running, I have time to seek out other similar blogs. I was able to find quite a few that cover the freelancing world and blogging, among others, that truly interested me. When I came across a post that I really liked, I left a comment for the blogger letting them know I liked it. In doing so, I was also able to leave behind a link to my own blog. In some cases, this is very helpful as, once again, these other sites already have popularity with Google. If you want to get the Googlebot to crawl your site, this is a sure way of doing so.

A few words of caution: If you are going to do this, make sure that the blog you are commenting is relevant to yours. Also, do not submit a comment just because it will give you a link. Make a contribution to the discussion. Let the author know what you thought of his or her article, or add something that may have been missed. If you simply comment the heck out of blogs to gain more links, you are SPAMMING. This is not only a huge pain in the butt for bloggers, it is extremely unethical. Don’t do it.

While there are many more directories, listing services, social networking sites and other methods of getting listed, this is a quick summary showing you how I got indexed by Google in just two days. Of course, just because I am listed does not mean I will rank high in the search results, though I am already beginning to see visits that resulted from a Google search. It is now up to me to make sure my blog remains relevant and useful to my readers.

Do you have any additional thoughts on getting indexed by Google or any other search service? Let me know!

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