Getting your blog registered, hosted and installed is just a minute aspect of the work ahead. To create search engine visibility for your blog, there are a few technicalities that need resolving. One such technicality includes manoeuvring things to get your blog listed on Google results. How can this be done? With a little guidance, taking those long and technical steps will create maximum exposure for your blog.
The Foundation of Indexing for Search Engines
Things will get technical at this stage. However, expounding on the terminologies you’ll encounter on a regular basis, should provide a little insight as to how Google operates.
Indexing
Indexing with Google, or any other search engines for that matter, shadows a similar process. Indexing is the process through which search engines accumulate every bit of information feasible through bots. The information collected is further retrieved and exhibited on search engine results pages (SERPs). Indexing a page or blog underscores the relevance and quality of the page in question.
Bots
Bots are used as pawns in indexing. These are programs employed by search engines to discover data on the Internet. The bot used by Google to index content is dubbed Googlebot.
Spidering or Crawling
Bots are employed to crawl webpages. The process by which they locomote or ‘crawl’ about is designated crawling or spidering. Bots transpose around webpages through links.
Acquaintance with a few search engine jargons will not automatically get your blog listed on Google results page, but it’s a great start. How do Googlebots actually crawl and index your blog and related pages?
Putting Your New Blog Out There: How?
You’re now ready to pronounce your blog to the world. By considering the methods below, your blog should be highly visible. Notably, using those steps won’t get you a number one spot on Google’s SERP; however, with consistent industriousness and commitment, you should get it done.
Let Google know about your blog
The initial step in getting listed is to let Google know about your blog. This can be done by submitting your blog’s URL. However, once submitted, based on information from Webmaster Tools, appearance in Google’s index is not a guarantee. Don’t be discouraged, go ahead and submit it, nonetheless. Once the URL is indexed, Google will keep making updates.
Generate a sitemap
A sitemap is an XML document or file that allows you to create a list of the webpages you have on your blog. Once a sitemap is generated for your blog, you’re basically relating the content and webpages you have onsite to Google’s search engine. Googlebots are employed to read sitemaps so as to move about on your blog more intelligibly. Sitemaps are also hosts for metadata. Metadata provides information about your webpages. This information includes the frequency of updates on a webpage (how often your blog is updated), the updates done and the relevance of a webpage in connection to the URL.
Get Dirty With Search Engine Optimization
Submitting your blog to Google and generating a sitemap is a sure-fire way for Google to discover it. However, more is involved in getting it to stay visible. There are millions of webpages on the Internet; each competing for the number one spot on Google’s SERP for specific keywords. To compete, you need to ensure you’re doing more than just creating sitemaps and submitting URLs.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technical process used to ensure bloggers are maximizing their potential to create visibility for their blogs. There isn’t a solitary process for SEO. This sort of search engine marketing encapsulates various factors, namely off-page and on-page SEO.
Building Links with Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is a strategy used to improve the position of a website on Google’s SERP. It has strong ties with link building, but also engulfs other promotional methods with a single purpose in mind – to promote your blog. Typically, there are three (3) ways to building organic links with off-page SEO – link building, social media, and social bookmarking. These aren’t paid links but are accumulated through manual and sometimes tedious methods.
Link building
Under this category of off-page SEO, there’s a barrage of methods to implement. It’s the most reputed and common method for building links and generating traffic to your blog. It includes building or cultivating a relationship with other bloggers bycreating external links. Common and reputable link building strategies include blog commenting, forum commenting, Q & A interactions, guest posting and several others.
Social Media
Social media is used as a contemporary hub for connecting people all around the world. Though originally used as a personal platform, businesses are now using it as a means to promote awareness for their products and services; you can too. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and YouTube are popular social media networks. Why not create accounts and share whatever you blog about on those platforms? It’s also good to create a network. Try following and interacting with users of those platforms as much as possible.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking has all the features of a bookmarker, including so much more. A social bookmarking tool provides its members with the capacity to store, manage, search and organize relevant information online. It’s a simple hub used for saving website URLs that are retrievable at any time, once there’s an Internet connection.How do social bookmarking sites bring traffic to your blog and get your website on Google’s search results? Most of these social bookmarking tools allow its members to save links that are accessible by its members. With some social bookmarking sites, anyone can see a link or access some sort of content, even if they don’t have an account.
Once you save links on your bookmarking account, other people should be able to see what you are posting. If the link looks intriguing, they should be compelled to visit your blog post. A few social bookmarking tools you can give a go includes del.icio.us, Bundlr, list.ly, StumbleUpon, and a few others.
The sheer truth is, getting your blog listed on Google’s first results page or in the top ten list is not a seamless or overnight job; things take time. Once you consistently employ the search engine optimization tactics mentioned above, you should be able to gain some traction from Google.
