Part 2
Click here for part 1
Quite simply, just type your website address into the Google search box. If Google knows about your website, it will come up here in the search results. If your website doesn’t come up as a result, you will need to submit your sites to Google. (How to do that is covered in Part 1)
But, my site doesn't come up in search engines
Google and other search engines (a list can be found here) need to find your website before it can crawl, index it, rate it and display it in their listings.
SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages - here is an explanation about SERPS) and Googlebot (Google spiders - here is an explanation about Googlebot) accesses your page if it knows your website exists. This is the reason why your website doesn’t come up in Google search. Google probably doesn’t know about it.
In Part 1, I talked about Google and the other top search engines finding your site through a link that is already on another website, which Google already has in it’s index. A link from a blog, forum or other website.
What type of link is best?
As long as it is seen as a link (also known as a hyperlink) then any link will do. As long as the link is from a real site not one just set up to just add 100's and 100's of links and that's all. A link from a "real" site even if it's an unrelated industry or subject to your site will still grab the attention of Google and other search engines. Infact, links from "real" unrelated sites are still extremely valuable in boosting your search ranking. Doing this will give you a link profile which search engines love!
How to automatically update Google when you have added new post/content to your blog/site
With your blog/site, you can ping Google and other engines using RSS or XML. Or registering with a site like FEEDBURNER. This will allow you to instantly index new content on your blog/site. If you have an xml sitemap then even better although, this is mainly useful for very large sites, smaller sites will not see much benefit from a xml sitemap. So, unless you have a really large website then I would probably use my time elsewhere. If you still feel the need to create an xml sitemap here's how.
You can also add your site to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
With GWT, even if you have multiple sites, you can add them all here.
You can submit your website and verify it in GWT. The procedure is very simple with a little technical knowledge. If you want to bypass getting other sites to link to yours then submitting to GWT is a workaround and will still give you that much needed higher/better ranking in search engines.
If after a few weeks or months, your site is still not showing up in Google and other search engines after doing all of this (everything except spamming, never SPAM!) then something might have gone wrong.
Don't panic just yet!
Even if you don't submit your page to Google and the top search engines, there are still rules that you must follow. This Google support page will show you those rules and answer many questions along the way and it also has a very helpful video to go along with it. If you are like me, then sometimes seeing/watching is easier than reading instuctions. Note that these rules can change from time-to-time so keep that in mind.
You can view your website in Google webmaster tools to make sure everything is right as it should be. If Google can access your site, you probably need to review your content and by using the Google support page I have spoken about above, make sure your website follows and complies with the Webmaster Guidelines.
In my next blog entry I will talk about keywords, internal links and more!
Thank you to everyone who has read my blog posts. Please do me a huge favor and click on the like button, facebook and twitter buttons and add to your own social networks. Passing the link along to friends and family. All this helps the artists to get their work out there and as you can see these artists do great work!
Many thanks
Cheryl
Owner and creator of Golden Jackal