Get Google to Notice You

17Feb/0621

Get Google to Notice You

Someone who has my utmost respect recently asked for a bit of advice. I was terribly flattered.

The question: What's the best/easiest/free way to get Google to list your website in search results for topics you write about?

Here's my response (via e-mail):

Actually, I just resolved my battle with Google. I was banned for a couple of months because I cheated. I don't want to bog you down with the details of that - but just know that if you cheat, you get dropped.

So I cleaned up my site and the Google spiders are crawling it again (that's a good thing). That means Google recognizes that my site is valid and that their automated computers are looking at it daily and indexing it for keywords.

Anyway - back on track now....

The easiest way to get indexed in the first place is to ping your site. Pinging = sending a notification to web trackers to let them know you've updated your page. I ping my site every time I post something new.

Best pinging site:
http://www.pingoat.com/

Type in the name of your site and the URL. You can ignore the XML feed thing. Click all three categories to select all services. Then click "go pingoat."

After that, you can bookmark the resulting page. That way it'll remember your choices for next time.

Google, Yahoo, MSNSearch, etc all have their own spider/webcrawlers. Those spiders regularly check indexing sites like technorati.com or blogrolling.com . Pingoat notifies those indexing sites that you've updated your shit and Google et al will find out via technorati et al. Capische?

So that should do it. Within a couple of weeks, you'll be popping up in search engines. The more you ping (whenever you write a new post), the more keywords get indexed.

Now... if you really want to speed up the process...

All search engines monitor Google, which leads the pack. So if you can prod Google to list your site sooner than later, you'll start seeing search engine traffic a bit sooner.

You can do that here:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

It's super easy. Just enter your website's URL then enter the verification code and submit. You can put the name of your site in the comments field if you'd like.

And if you want tips on increasing your keyword success, you can read about that here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Holy fucking shit - this is a long email.

Can you tell I'm a great big dork and I like talking about this shit? Sorry! Maybe I'll post this on The Churning sometime. I bet others would like to know as well.

Rock on!
JJ

I've got nothing to hide here. Yes, I'm a great big dork.

So there was a follow-up question about keywords. Should a blogger place specific keywords on their site anywhere? That's where I got fucked - TWICE. But I didn't go into the details in my email (Ha! That rhymes!).

First, I cheated by hiding keywords in posts by making them the same color as the background. That's a big no no. I learned the hard way. Yeah I was BANNED. Remember, I'm still new at this. It hasn't even been a year yet.

Next, I fucked up by putting a meta keyword tag in my header. You'll know what this is if you've done it. If you don't, then you're fine. But what I learned through experience is that Google hates repetitive keywords in the meta keyword tag. I fucked up. BANNED again! I had keywords for some of my most popular posts in the header (i.e. JackEBrown, shit euphemisms, indie yuppie quiz, etc). But, the problem is, those are old posts that you'd have to search for or dig around in the archives to find. Hence, having those keywords on my home page makes them seem irrelevant. The Google spiders noticed and gave me the axe. I just corrected that issue a few weeks ago.

Again, I didn't get into all that in my e-mail. Here's my response:

Don't worry about keywords. You can enter Technorati tags to get better rankings on Technorati, but that won't lead to many hits at all, and the tags won't help Google one bit. It's way more trouble than it's worth (in my opinion).

The great thing about blogging is that keywords are just part of writing posts. Like if you had a website where you sold bicycles and the main page is just a bunch of pictures of bicycles and their brand names, then you'd have to worry about creatively placing keywords in there.

But with blogs, you're writing new entries constantly and each of those entries is indexed by the search engines. That's a ton of keywords every day, just because you're writing.

I know some of you may want to dispute my comment about Technorati tags. That's fine. I don't use them, but I totally respect what Technorati does for bloggers. It's a great service. I mainly use it to find out who links to me. I just choose not to tag my posts for them.

Anyway, I hope this info helps a few people out there. Enjoy.

Oh yeah - you guys have any other tips?

Tagged as: blogging, google, SEO Leave a comment

Comments (21) Trackbacks (1) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Ron
February 17th, 2006 - 10:54

Thanks for the tips JJ. I was wondering about some of that myself. It’s amazing how addictive this blogging thing gets to be.
mojotek
February 17th, 2006 - 11:40

Great advice! You would have saved me a lot of time if I known all that about 4 months ago… oh well, of course I didn’t ask then either.
Thao
February 17th, 2006 - 12:36

JJ, you bring us all the very best sexual euphemisms and blogging tips! Thanks. Now off to ping the blog.
christa
February 17th, 2006 - 12:59

The only thing I have to add might be to keep at least one post a day to a subject that is “hot” and “wanted” right now. If you follow any news these days you know pretty much what will stick around for a while and what won’t. Media are easy to predict in many ways and so are the things that people are talking about.
Then it might be local stuff or international, doesn’t really matter. People will search for it and if you ping your posts (either manually or automatically) they will hit your blog.

Other than that, nopes…not really
April
February 17th, 2006 - 14:09

You know, I am not worried about getting traffic from Google. Why? Because not once has any of the people who’ve came across my blog via search engine, found what their looking for. I don’t believe that I satisfied the person who was looking for “cockzilla” and found my blog. So yeah, they clicked on my blogs link, and yeah, they added another number to my stat counter, but they’re not reading it (for the most part). That’s the whole reason I started a blog was so I could write stuff and people would read it. So, I just don’t see the point of going through all of that you mentioned just to add another hit on my stat counter? But that’s just me. =)
April
February 17th, 2006 - 14:10

that should have been they’re looking for, not their looking for.
Maine
February 17th, 2006 - 14:22

I find the best method is to pray Google will leave you alone. You will inevitably end up first.

I’m sorta on April’s team here. I can do without 8000 strangers reading my shit on their way to “black pussy bukkake” pictures.

But everything I’ve ever read says you increase your Google ranking by:
1.) frequently updating
2.) pinging webcrawlers
3.) getting externally linked by other high ranking sites
Maine
February 17th, 2006 - 14:23

Oh, and the title bar gets a heavier weight than the content, so put the sexy words in the blog titles.
JJ
February 17th, 2006 - 14:51

Ron:
So true! I am totally addicted.

Mojotek:
That’s about how long it took me to learn about all that shit too.

Thao:
Dirty words and blog tips – my top two priorities!

Christa:
Great tip! I’ve definitely found that to be true. A couple of days after I posted the picture of Tyrone Prothro breaking his leg in a football game, I got a ton of hits outof it. It was a big deal in teh sports world that week, and people came looking for it.

April, Maine:
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people end up here looking for something other than what I’m providing, like naked pics, etc. But a good chunk of my Google hits lead to exactly what people are looking for. Like the shit euphemisms, or pubic hairstyles, or Jack E Brown dancing etc. I’m providing a service for pervs!

Maine:
Thanks for the tips. I’ve been trying to tailor my titles for that, but sometimes I can’t help trying to think of something clever for a title instead of something that’ll bring hits.

Side Note:
Most of you know I’m a total stat whore. Catering to Google has led to at least 100 search string hits every day. And I honestly believe a lot of those people find what they’re looking for here. Now I just gotta work on getting highly ranked sites to link me!
Sar
February 17th, 2006 - 16:23

Wow a flattery touche, JJ. This was/is great advice. The only thing that sucks is that I seem to update (and I only post once a day so go figure) more frequently than pinging will accept. So I have to remember to go back and ping after waiting awhile longer.
JJ
February 17th, 2006 - 17:08

Sar:
Ooooh – I have a solution for that…

This pinging site is a bit less restrictive:
http://www.kping.com/

I use it as an alternative when Pingoat is down.
c-dub
February 17th, 2006 - 18:21

jj – i have a document from a former google employee or something that dispells some of the mystery…it is an SEO guide this guy wrote…hit me up on myspace if you want it. ciao, and with luv from tampa.
CC Rider
February 17th, 2006 - 18:27

Thanks, great tips!
the english guy
February 18th, 2006 - 10:23

I would suggest using social bookmarking sites too, for EVERY article you write, no matter how big or small. Sure, some people on the social bookmark sites might get pissed at you, but it gets you more incoming links: Blinklist, Simpy, Spurl, Furl, Del.icio.us, Snag-it, the list goes on, there’s a lot of them.

Next, ALWAYS tag every link you write. I think it helps because it gets you in technorati searches (and I notice a fair amount of them in my blogs).

I think the best bit of advice is really, write original content. Write and write and write. Google loves it. You’ll get to the top eventually, it just takes time.
antickpix
February 18th, 2006 - 11:16

oh JJ, you are a naughty person to get banned twice.

ah well, but my blog is still unpopular. perhaps i should court getting banned.
JJ
February 22nd, 2006 - 23:39

C-Dub:
Thanks. I got the file you sent. You rock!

CC Rider:
Any time.

English Guy:
Thanks for the tips!

Antickpix:
I was sort of flattered. Getting banned means I mattered enough for someone to take notice. Though, I’m glad I’m back in action.

If you want more readers, you should join BLEX. Surf a lot of sites and leave comments EVERYWHERE. They’ll come back and visit you sometime. Trust me.
©madbull
February 27th, 2006 - 09:30

Quite some good advice here.

One more important thing you have forgotten is Open Directory Project. If Google and search engines are really important to you, read their ‘About dmoz’ page and you’ll understand the importance. Also Technorati ad fe. Blogrolling are used by most important search engines.

Basically Google, just like other SE will find and crawl your site automatically. The only thing you need is 1 link on another page. The logic is simple, they crawl the web and follow every link they find. If they see that it is a new link/page (they recognize the IP) they will visit you. Look for your site-title in google, or even for your full URL.
The second month Google will crawl your whole site (they bots analyze and quote your Site once/month (minumum, of course you can put in your metas to come back daily). The Google pagerank is reviewed monthly as well. The third month your pagerank will look ‘almost final’.

If you used ’some tricks’ or want to use tricks, watch out. One of the best articles I have ever read to understand ‘PageRank’ (for beginners) is written by Dave from http://www.maximumawesome.com. Check it out here.

(Note to self :: even if you give this kind of advice, you should proofread)
(Answer to self :: Maybe next time)
JJ
February 27th, 2006 - 10:06

Wow. Excellent work, Madbull.
©madbull
February 27th, 2006 - 11:23

Oh one more thing, SE (still) like static urls (or shorturls). You know there are sites with the title of the post in the url, yes that’s what I mean. Turn it on (if I remember well the option is built-in in WP). mod_rewrite on the server is required. Most hosters offer mod_rewrite nowadays.
©madbull
February 27th, 2006 - 11:33

[spam]
to check if mod_rewrite is enabled, upload an info.php file on your server (you find them easily online, if you use an offline webserver like xammp you will find it -I think- in the apache folder) . Now go to your webserver to the address http://www.yoururl/info.php and look for mod_rewrite ([ctrl] + [F] is your friend). Sometimes those files are also called phpinfo.php or infophp.php. If you don’t have any or find one, send me a mail and I’ll send you one as soon as I am home.
Roy10
October 23rd, 2009 - 09:18

But there is an enormous difference between fluidity and compromise. ,