Getting Indexed In Google
For many bloggers, they often wonder how they can get their blog indexed in Google and other search engines. However, getting indexed in the search engines is not the problem. The question to ask is, “how do I want my blog indexed?”. Getting your blog to be picked up in the search engines is easy. In fact, I would consider it more of a challenge to figure out a way to prevent your blog from being indexed. Indexing comes automatically and natural, unless you make it a point to prevent indexing from happening. The irony of this statement is actually a huge contributing factor towards how you want your blog to appear in the search engines. It’s not about getting indexed, its about how you get indexed.
The Robot Road Map
I have made a lot of changes to my blog over the past few months. The changes that take place reflect an action or a plan towards gaining an improved visibility in the search engines. While social networking is an effective means for gaining traffic to your blog, it’s hard work. Very hard work! If you have a blog that does well in the major search engines, traffic will come natural.
What is a blog? To me, I like to keep things simple. John Chow asked the same question in a post he wrote a few days ago. And the comments that are coming in are way to complicated. If you run a blog, it can be whatever you want it to be. My choice is to have a blog that gains traffic from the search engines and converts the traffic into regular readers. And who doesn’t want that? How this is all achieved is by the process you go about getting your blog indexed.
To get a blog and its content sitting pretty in the search engines, you need only four things! Keeping things simple and in perspective is the key:
The four things a blog need for proper indexing:
- A Horse (search engine robot)
- An Electric Fence (Robots.txt)
- Horse Feed (Your Content)
- And a path for the horse to get to the food (sitemap.xml)
That is all you need! Everything else typically found in a blog does nothing but confuse the horse. And without having an electric fence installed, you allow this horse to wonder aimlessly on any field. And when a horse wonders, it will eat whatever it wants. And what the horse eats is reflected in its, “ah… poop!”. Thus, if you don’t control where the horse goes, and what it eats, the end results can be fairly, “unpredictable”.
If you have an electric fence installed, you keep the horse out of bad grassy areas and direct the horse to the area you want him to graze. The purpose is to keep the horse controlled and healthy, by feeding it great food.
Popularity: unranked [?]
11 comments
Google Analytics (sp) says that my robots aren’t allowing them into one of my sites. How can I find out where so I can fix it? (entertainusnews.blogspot.com)
Wow, interesting new look to your blog. What prompted the makeover?
@ Eliza,
I think you mean Google Webmaster Tools… Google Analytics is traffic analysis. Webmaster Tools would produce a message like that. Also, that is good. That is the purpose of Google Webmaster Tools, to let you know of any problems that would normally go undetected.
Take a look at this article I wrote awhile back:
http://www.garryconn.com/successful-blogging-tips-06.php
Focus on the Robots.txt part…
You are doing well and on the right path. Disallowing robot access to certain sections of your site is what you want. But the issue is the address url you are specifying for your site map. You have this:
Where if I am not mistaken, you should have this:
I am not quite as good with Blogger as I am with Wordpress… but I believe that is the URL you need.
Also, I would make that the first line on your robots.txt file.
Re-read the successful blogging tips #6. I know you read it once before… follow it closely, and drop me a comment back with info on your success with or be sure to ask additional questions if you require more help!
Keep up the great work… I am proud to see you doing so much. I know it is difficult for people like us typical bloggers to be expected to be experts in programs and things like that… where all we want to do is write and be bloggers… unfortunately, in this little world we call the blogosphere… we have to be experts in many areas… programming, marketing, search engine knowledge, etc… I am really happy to see how much you have learned. Keep up the great work! And don’t hesitate to ask for help.
- Garry
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@ George,
Hi George! How are things going for you? I haven’t been happy with my old design for awhile. It was causing tons of problems for me. For one, I had scared it up pretty badly with modifications and alterations… Comments were dropping off the face of the blogosphere, it wasn’t very search engine friendly and it was difficult to maintain. This new theme is simple, clean, basic and very stable. I can thank Dosh Dosh and The Wrong Advices for the creation of the theme… it’s very nice and I enjoy using it.
Also, in all honestly, with the site starting to pick up in the search engines, I can’t help but apply a little monetization to the site. Yes, I have many regular readers who visit daily, who won’t click the ads… nor do I expect them to. But with the site doing well in the search engines, this allows me to expand a little bit on what I can write here on the site. With my writing I can draw in traffic and help connect them with things that will do them good and make a little money doing it. Since I rolled out the new design, I have been compensated fairly well and that makes me feel good!
Overall, the change was made to help aid in my continuing growth and visibility in the search engines. I have a lot of regular readers and I love everyone! But, I want to expand and open the doors for more people. With the changes I have made to the site, these doors are now open.
Talk to you soon and thanks for dropping the comment.
- Garry
Gary, I understand three of the four point. I am confused on the first one, what should we do with “A horse (search engine robot)”? What am I missing with that page?
Sorry, if I am being slow!
Francesco
Great article Garry,
T’was a good idea to explain it creatively – with the horse and stuff!
Cheers!
Mani
As someone who is born and raised in the south, getting search advice by way of a barnyard explanation is just one of the reasons I read this blog every time my reader alerts.
HeHe! You said Poop! HeHe!
Keep the good stuff coming.
Cool. I am all for making more money!
And yes it is a new design by Maki and the wrong advices.
Talk to you soon,
George
@ Terry,
Those two sentences used together don’t mesh well.
On a more serious note. Maybe the barnyard explanation is too much… but, there are so many other sites that make a mountain out of a mole hill. This isn’t rocket science. The hard part is just getting the answers. Good answers! Ones that make sense. A lot of people want to hoard the answers, where with me… not only do I want to share, but I want you to understand.
@ George,
I think you might have mistaken my word “Thank” with “Think”, because I know who the authors are, in fact knowing this, played an active roll in choosing the theme. One can expect a high level of craftsmanship from a theme designed by Maki. I needed something that not only looked nice but was stable as well. The coding in this theme is tight. Very well written and designed theme.
OOOPS! I didn’t mistake your words, but I wrote the wrong word… “new” was supposed to be “nice”. I meant to agree with you that it’s a “nice” design…
LOL… don’t you hate unforgiving computers and technology!
It is so easy to make mistakes and then your original message that had an original intention or message gets for something else. Reminds me of the quality of support you can get thru live chat. lol!!!
No probs man… we are on the same page!
Ok, I think I get this, now I’ll see if I can figure out how to get my horse site to conform for the robots. If I understand correctly, then I want to direct the robots to the atom.xml page instead of directly to my front door. Is that right?
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