Chapter 2: Getting Traffic to Your Website
Section 1: Getting Your Site Indexed
This is a critical first step in getting free search engine traffic: the search engines must know you exist!
In order to understand what we are going to do here, it will be useful to understand how search enginges like Google actually operates. When you perform a search in Google, they do NOT scan the entire internet live to generate results to show you. Rather, they refer to an offline index that they have created automatically using "robots" or "spiders".
They can return a million results in .35 seconds this way, but there are a few downsides: some websites may have changed since their last index, some new and useful websites may have come online and are not indexed yet, and some sites may have been up for some time and are simply not indexed yet.
So, how exactly do you get indexed quickly in Google (and the other search engines)? And, almost as important, how do you make sure that ALL of your pages get indexed individually, and how do you keep Google’s spiders coming back frequently to make sure they relflect all the updates that you make to your site?
As it turns out, there a few simple things that you can do to make sure all of this happens. The to-do list here is: get listed in directories, get quality links to your site, and create a good sitemap that you submit regularly to Google. I will walk you through all three right now.
First off, understanding the difference between Yahoo and Google will be useful. While Google is a true search engine, Yahoo began as a website DIRECTORY. (In 2002, Yahoo also added a search engine to their services.) The distinction is that Yahoo actually had humans review every website that was submitted, to check for site quality and relevence in the selected category, prior to listing the website. This resulted in a smaller number of websites listed, but also helped prevent tricking them into listing a website simply stuffed with keywords and offering no true content, which can sometimes happen with Google.
Because of that, Google actually will give your website a boost in their rankings if you appear in Yahoo’s directory, because a human has verified your site. Since Yahoo has to pay employees to do this work, though, they do charge you to be listed. Actually, what you pay for is to ensure that a Yahoo employee will look at your site, they do NOT guarantee that you will be placed in their directory. The charge is $299, per year.
Because their directory listing is not as prominent as it once was, and because there are other free alternatives, I do NOT recommend you pay to be listed here. (You can and should submit for free to be listed in their search engine index though, I will go over that later.)
The website DMOZ.org is a directory that Google refers to that is free to submit and will help your search engine ranking. ONCE YOUR WEBSITE IS COMPLETED, submit it to the appropriate category by going to this link: In fact, you can submit multiple pages to the directory, so long as they each have unique content.
Being listed in DMOZ will help to speed up getting your site indexed in Google. Another way is, which is to have Google find you naturally, is to be linked from other quality sites that are related to your topic (like this one)! You can learn more about link building here, and you can request a link exchange with my site by going here. I will gladly exchange links with you if you have a good quality site up.
The third step I mentioned, having a good sitemap, is critical in making sure that most or all of your individual pages are indexed. I actually have two separate sitemaps: one for humans, and one for robots. The human sitemap includes the same format as my site, is created manually, and includes a site search to help people find what they are looking for. That is linked from all my pages at the top, and you can see that here. The other sitemap I have godaddy create automatically, and then I have them submit that to google. I go over how to do that in the video on this page. It only takes a minute to do, and will really help quickly. The first day I did this, I went from having 2 pages indexed to having 9 pages.
If you do these steps, you should get listed pretty quickly and broadly in the search engines. As a plan B though, you should submit your site manually (for free) to Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Just follow the links here: submit to Google, submit to Yahoo, submit to MSN.
As a final note, updating your website frequently will also help to bring back the search engine spiders regularly. By having a blog that you post to once a week or more, and by adding an article or two every week, you will meet that requirement and keep the search engines and visitors coming back.
Now that you are indexed in the search engines, on to another critical topic, and one that can separate you from competitors if you do it properly. Doing proper keyword research …
