Getting indexed by Google doesn't guarantee anything for your website, but if you've done your homework and found great keywords the search engine traffic will come eventually, and here's a guide to get your site indexed by Google fast - really fast.
This is the process I have used whenever I have started a new WordPress blog. My blogs have been indexed in less than 6 hours using this process, sometimes as fast as 2 hours.
And we're talking a brand new blog here, that's get indexed by Google in 2-6 hours from the moment I've registered the new domain!
There are no magic tricks, no "black hat" tactics - just utilizing free services anyone can use, setting up the website in a way that both the readers and search engines find what they need and the power of WordPress as a platform for perfectly search engine optimized website...
The 11 Steps for Lightning-Speed Indexing by Google
- Use whatever domain registrar service you normally use.
- Register the domain for 3 years, or whatever the longest registration time is (longer the better)
- Google might be suspicious at domains registered for only 1 year
- From Google's point of view, domain registered for long/max. time is less likely to be "spammy"
- I usually register my domains at DreamHost, where I also host my domains
- Using a separate domain registrar is better, especially if you happen to sell the blog
- With DreamHost, the newly registered domain is usable in minutes
- If you don't have an hosting account, check my Resources-page for recommended hosting services.
2. Install WordPress
- This takes couple of minutes if your host has an easy install of WordPress like it should (e.g. cpanel)
- Do not use default "one-click" install, always go "advanced" or "custom" and modify the options
- Personally, I host and install my blogs at DreamHost.
3. Setup WordPress with the Perfect Start-Up Settings
- Check my guide here: WordPress Settings for Every Blog
- Select the best permalink structure, depending on your blog that would be:
- /%postname%/
- /%post_id%/%postname%/
- /%year%/%month%/%day%/%postname%/
- /%category%/%postname%/
4. Install and Configure the Essential Plugins
- All in One SEO Pack
- Make sure you enable the plugin
- Robots Meta
- Feedburner Feedsmith
- Configure this at the later step when you add your RSS feed to the Feedburner service
- Google Analytics for WordPress
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Check the settings, add categories or/and tags to be added if you like those to be indexed
- Most of the above are also in my The Most Essential WordPress Plugins -article.
5. Add the to the WordPress automatic ping list
- Get The Automatic Ping List for Blogs from my Resources -page
- Add the ping URLs to WordPress at Settings >> Writing
- Note that the Google XML Sitemap also notifies the main biggest search engines whenever you add new content.
6. Add the basic pages needed
- All these are not needed on all blogs / websites
- At minimum have the privacy policy up, but preferably add the About- and Contact- pages as well.
- I like to have all these on every blog, as they add credibility to the site (in both Google's and your readers point of view).
- Write these beforehand, and re-use your old ones if needed.
- About page
- See my 8 Steps to Write a Killer About Page -article for guidance.
- Contact Us page
- use the Contact Form 7 -plugin for example
- Make Privacy Policy page
- you can get free privacy policy from http://FreePrivacyPolicy.com
- Make Disclosure page (if applicable)
- you can get free disclosure text from http://DisclosurePolicy.org
- Make Terms of Service page (if applicable)
- this page could have a comment policy for example
6. Create categories for the blog
- Category names should be based on market / keyword research
7. Write your first (keyword optimized) UNIQUE post
- The post should be search engine optimized for your main keyword phrase
- The post must be UNIQUE! Leave copy-paste, spam-blog style to the losers.
- Add the post to one category
- Add at least one tag to the post
- I like to use only 1-3, but you can have more, but keep it under 8
- Publish the post
8. Add your RSS feed to Feedburner
- After adding the feed, activate the PingShot service at Feedburner
- Configure the newly created feed to the Feedburner Feedsmith settings
- Settings >> Feedburner (plugin)
9. Add your site to the Google Webmaster tools
- Add the site to Google Webmaster Tools
- Read my Google Webmaster Tools -guide, if needed.
- Add the claim code to the Robots Meta plugin settings
- Settings >> Robots Meta (plugin)
- Submit your XML sitemap to the Google Webmaster tools
- Submit both the zipped and unzipped versions, if you use the default settings of Google XML Sitemaps plugin:
- http://yournewdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz
- http://yournewdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- Submit both the zipped and unzipped versions, if you use the default settings of Google XML Sitemaps plugin:
10. Create new profile for the new blog at Google Analytics
- If you're unfamiliar with Google Analytics, read my Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog -guide on the subject.
- And you might also be interested in how to Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics, although it's not directly related to this "get indexed fast" process.
- Add the Google Analytics ID to the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin settings
- Settings >> Google Analytics
11. Bookmark your site and your first post with Social Bookmarking tools
- Bookmark the blog main URL and the post at delicious.com
- Digg your first post
(12. Sit back, read a good book and check results tomorrow)
Done!
With these steps I am able to get a new WordPress blog indexed by Google in 2-6 hours, every time.. The greatest thing is that there is nothing special or hard at the step above. All this proves the power of WordPress blog as VERY search engine friendly website, especially when supercharged with the great plugins like Google XML Sitemaps and All in One SEO Pack.
As a side note, other search engines will follow quite quickly, because of the XML sitemap plugin which notifies the search engines automatically. You can possibly speed up getting indexed by Bing and Yahoo, if you're using their "webmaster services" too (I haven't used or tested them yet).
I believe the most essential steps to get website indexed by Google with this process are the WordPress automatic ping service (with the list from my resources -page), adding the site to Google Webmaster Tools and submitting the sitemap. Note that NO "submit to search engines" is needed. No RSS feed service submissions. No adding to blog directories or extensive social bookmarking (just the two big ones). Easy, eh?
If you have a blog already but you haven't done the steps above, I highly recommend that you go and do them right now.
And if you're starting a new blog, test the process out, come back here and leave a comment how it turned out..
6 links to this post.
26 comments.
This is an excellent list. I particularly like the instruction to add the ping list to settings/writing. Will check that out.
Here is one more that you might like. I submit all new Blogs to launchfeed.com. It is super one line easy and helps to get indexed almost immediately. Killerstartups monitors that site and if your blog has a unique twist killerstartups will give you a major boost if they pick it up like they did our site. Great Blog, have just subscribed. Thanks Rich.
Thanks Rich for your comment and the launchfeed.com tip. Great site and definitely worth it, especially if one is launching a new product through the new blog/website.
Really good list.
One thing I’d like to add is:
In the footer include a link to your new blog domain using your primary keyword.
Andrew
.-= Andrew Rondeau´s last blog ..Another WordPress Security Release! =-.
How long do you think it would take for a non-technical person to complete these steps?
.-= Devon Dudgeon´s last blog ..Chase sends mixed messages about SMS =-.
Hi Devon. Like I mentioned getting indexed really fast doesn’t guarantee anything (apart from giving an idea for a post like this), so there’s really no rush. Luckily all the steps in the list are good/best practise for setting up a blog anyway :)
But to answer your question: How much time it’ll take for someone not-so technologically savvy to do the steps? I’d say it can be done in couple of hours, even by a non-technical person, especially after going through it once.
None of the tasks are very technical, as nearly everything can be done with a click of the mouse (apart from writing the post and initial pages of course). If one is familiar with the tasks at hand (like tweking WordPress settings and plugins), the above can be done very fast, but if not, it will take some time, even for a technical person. And it should also be noted that if one is setting up a multiple blog business, the process would become a routine or outsourced anyway..
Part of the procedures makes me feel like drifting down the memory lane. I remember the time I migrated to WP from blogger, the configurations were all seemed so new to me! I’m just glad it’s all now up and running.
Appreciate your comment on Dailyblogtips for the guest post. Thanks again.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
.-= Ching Ya’s last blog ..WCHINGYA.COM Is Now A Do Follow Blog (Free Images)! =-.
Hi Zemalf,
Awesome post. I have installed two of my blogs using the above instruction and amended one of the blog.
Can you please let me download and create a pdf on the above for me and my team.
Regards
Amarjit
Zemalf !
Very very nice post.
Just wanted to share something about point # 2 concerning security. Do not use the one click install of your hosting. Do not !!!
I recommend to study in deep the issue and take the long way. It will save a lot of time and pain in the future. Otherwise you might find yourself loosing all your work and achievements in a minute after a hacking attack.
And more. Do not forget to backup regularly.
Prevention is always cheaper than repairing.
Good luck.
Hey there, thanks for the feedback and mentioning the possible one-click install issue.
I have used the advanced installing system on DreamHost (where I can set my own usernames, passwords, mysql-db’s, etc.), and called it one-click install, as it does the install on one-click after I configure the installation settings :)
Great article Zemalf!
I followed your guide step by step and the next day I was indexed by Google. I am new to blogging and I had no problem following your steps. Keep the great articles coming!
@Rudu: If I am not mistaken you are referring mysql injection attacks. I’ve heard of that before and a good fix is to install the wordpress table rename plug-in and change the prefix of your database tables to something other than wp. Here’s the address of the plug-in http://www.seoegghead.com/software/wordpress-table-rename.seo
@ Zemalf: Great article. I’ve done most of them on my new blog but still haven’t been indexed by Google and it’s been 5 days since I submitted the sitemap through Google webmasters tool. I’m off to do some social bookmarking and pinging to see if that helps getting me new blog indexed.
P.S: http://topicexchange.com/RPC2 doesn’t seem to work anymore.
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi’s last blog ..How To Register For ClickBank As A Nigerian =-.
Really good stuff listed here.
You have laid this out in an easy to follow manner. I think the ping listing is a really critical step to take. Anyone launching a new blog should read this post – first!
.-= Jimi Jones’s last blog ..Looking Ahead – Blogging in 2010 =-.
I use Blogspot instead of wordpress. Will that still do?
You can do everything from 7. and onwards (and 5+6 to some degree). The blog won't get indexed that fast, but it will be indexed after a while. For free blogging platforms, the best way to ensure the blog being indexed is writing unique content, otherwise search engine easily labels the blog “spammy” and it takes a while before it's indexed.
As getting indexed doesn't mean that you get any substantial traffic from the search engine at the beginning, getting blog indexed fast is rarely needed, it will happen eventually, so if you focus on creating good content on the blog, the traffic will come. And at the beginning blog commenting and using Faceboko/Twitter will help you get the initial traffic a lot better than search engines.
I use Blogspot instead of wordpress. Will that still do?
You can do everything from 7. and onwards (and 5+6 to some degree). The blog won't get indexed that fast, but it will be indexed after a while. For free blogging platforms, the best way to ensure the blog being indexed is writing unique content, otherwise search engine easily labels the blog “spammy” and it takes a while before it's indexed.
As getting indexed doesn't mean that you get any substantial traffic from the search engine at the beginning, getting blog indexed fast is rarely needed, it will happen eventually, so if you focus on creating good content on the blog, the traffic will come. And at the beginning blog commenting and using Faceboko/Twitter will help you get the initial traffic a lot better than search engines.
I'll keep this article :) I came to the right place as I just have my own domain and using wordpress. I'll follow your tips bro, thanks
I suggest you update your blog commenting “name”. You'll risk getting marked as spam using blog name on the name (especially when it's against my comment policy).
Done bro, change my “name”, how about this one? still spammy?
It's cool :) It's just that I didn't want you to end in the spam filters of AKismet or such, as the data is spread to all blogs.
Btw, your blog needs some serious optimization, it took 30 seconds to load and that will cause pretty much every reader to leave before the page loads and search engines don't appreciate it either (important part for getting indexed as well). You can check the loading times at pingdom for example: http://tools.pingdom.com/
Thanks Antti, You are really good friends :) Thanks for the reminder, I'll try to use the service and try to fix the problem.
Thanks for reminding me that I should digg my blog articles! :-)
Great article, Thank you – Very useful! :)
Thank you, I'm happy you enjoyed the post :)
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