actinic
online marketing blog
Friday, November 23, 2007
Google's Under-The-Radar Submission Tool
One of the questions I often get asked during our Search Engines and Online Marketing Course is how best to submit a web site to Google. There are basically four ways to do this, and some are preferable to others.
1. Automated submission
Many of our competitors offer automated search engine submission with their ecommerce packages, but we have never offered or recommended such a service. For one thing, it's a breach of Google's terms and conditions. If you don't believe me check it out here! It's point four under 'Quality guidelines - basic principles'.
2. Manual submission
You can submit your home page manually to Google, and to the other main search engines. But it doesn't guarantee that you will be listed, nor will it help them find all the pages on your site. It's better than doing nothing, and at least you won't be breaking any rules. But it's by no means the best way to get listed.
3. Linking
If your site is linked from other sites, the search engines will find it and index it. If you don't have any links, you might get a basic listing, but you will never rank well. All the search engines take account of the quality and number of inbound links when ranking a site, and on Google, they are the most important factor. It's far better to spend your time recruiting links from good quality, relevant sites than to go round submitting to every search engine you can think of.
4. XML site map
The best way to ensure that Google can find and index all the pages of your site is to submit a site map in a format called XML. If your site is built in Actinic, you can generate this using the free Google Site Map Mash from Mole End. Alternatively, search for something like 'google site map generator' to find one of the free generic tools that will do the job for you. In this case you will need to upload the XML file manually to your web site.
To submit your site map to Google, sign in to your Google Account (it's free to set up if you don't have one) and use the Webmaster Tools. You can also submit your site map to Yahoo! Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and enter the URL of your XML file into the 'Submit Site Feed' field. (MSN has promised to support the same site map format at some time in the future).
That's it! You now have an official back door to submit all your web pages to Google, and to Yahoo! as well.
Labels: ecommerce, google, linking, links, msn, search engine, site, site map, site maps, submission, submit, web, yahoo
# posted by Bruce Townsend @ 3:24 AM 0 Comments
