Search Engine Optimization - Get Indexed Fast

You can't place in the search engines until they index your site. Get listed fast with these easy tips.

Direct Submission

Most search engines offer a form to submit your site to. This has led to mixed results and a lot of speculation as to whether this helps or hurts your site. The search engines do seem to prefer discovering your site through links as opposed to having it submitted. The reason is popularity. The more you show up online, the more of a priority your site becomes for getting indexed.

• http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
• http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
• http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

Use an RSS Feed

The RSS feed should have your site navigation in it. It should include a link to each page in your site with a brief description. The descriptive text should be of value to a human reader for the best results.

Then set up personal accounts with Google, Yahoo! and MSN and submit your feed to those accounts. This makes the SE's aware of you, but doesn't quite guarantee instant results.

• http://www.google.com/ig
• http://my.yahoo.com/
• http://login.passport.net/

You can also submit your feed directly to Yahoo! at http://publisher.yahoo.com/submit.php.

Site Maps

Create a site map and then submit that map to Google and Yahoo! Google preferes XML maps but the .txt works just as well in my experience and then you can use the same map at Yahoo!

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
• http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Press Release

Write a quick press release and submit it at www.PRWeb.com for free. If you have industry trade publications you should submit it to them as well. This can also get you relevant backlinks from the beginning. Age is playing a big role in Google, including the age of links. Getting some good ones from the start will definitely help you long-term.

You can also add this release to your RSS feed.

Set up a free blog at www.blogger.com and announce your site in it. Why Blogger? Google owns it. 'Nuff said.

Get Backlinks

Finally, start getting backlinks. Submit your site wherever you can.

Track Progress

Watch your server logs for the search engine robots in your User Agents. It will say "Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/" or "msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)" or "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)". Once you've seen these appear check the search engines by entering your domain in the search field.

In Yahoo! you can click the "More from this site" link to see all the pages indexed. In Google, look for "Find web pages from the site domain.com". MSN automatically lists all the cached pages.