Before your website can get listed on a search engine, the search engine must first of all know that your website exists. Search engines do this by using a web crawler.
A web crawler is a program that methodically browses through the websites on the internet and allows the search engine to index them. How a web crawler works can be crudely summarized by these steps.
1. The web crawler visits the webpages that it has previously indexed.
2. It searches those webpages for outbound links.
3. It visits those links and indexes the pages that are new.
These steps are repeated as new webpages are found.
As you can see, the best way to get the search engine to index your page is to get another webpage that is already indexed to link to yours.
The other, less recommended, way of getting your webpage indexed is to submit your webpage URL to the search engine directly. This lets the search engine know that a webpage exists and needs to be crawled. However, this does not guarantee that your webpage will be crawled.
Here are some of the URL submission pages for the more common search engines.
If you want to submit your webpage URL to the search engines directly, it is recommended that you submit it to Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. This is because online sources say that these search engines sell their search results to the other smaller search engines.
Remember, when building a website, CONTENT IS KING. If you website has good content and is updated frequently with fresh material, people will come and naturally link your webpages.
In this video tutorial, we will teach you how to submit your website for Google search. Enjoy
Google introduced the Google +1 button recently and many of you might still be asking what is it? A new social feature?
Similar to the “Like” button on Facebook, the Google +1 is a simply way to like Google search results. When you’re signed into your Google account, every Google search result will have a +1 icon next to it. If you like the search result, just press on the +1 icon. By hitting the +1 icon, you are giving the search result a recommendation, or a stamp of approval.
So, the Google +1 is definitely a social feature. You can see what your friends +1’d, which in turn will more likely encourage you to click on a search result.
Check out the Google +1 button video on YouTube
If you haven’t noticed, the +1 button is now added to YouTube videos, under “Share”.
Next, copy and place the button script where you want the +1 button to display on your webpage.
<g:plusone></g:plusone>
For more information on creating the +1 button and/or the advanced options of button, please refer to Google’s +1 Button API
Adding Google +1 to Your WordPress Blog
If you do a search on the WordPress.org Plugin Directory, you will see there are currently 500+ and counting plugins that adds the Google +1 button to your pages, posts, sidebar or anywhere you want on your blog.
However, if you want to add the scripts in manually (in fear of incompatibility between the +1 plug-in and your existing plugins), you can also do so by adding the +1 script and button codes to your theme file.
1. Go to the Appearance section in your WordPress dashboard and click on “Editor”.
2. Find the “footer.php” file in the template you’re using.
3. Add the following line just before the </body> tag.
Then, add the button code wherever you want the +1 button to appear. For example if you want to add the button to your blog sidebar, you can simply add it as a text widget via the “Widgets” section.
You can also add the +1 button to individual posts by entering the button code in the body of the post, or by adding it the post.php template file.
Things you need to know about the +1 Button
1. The +1 button will influence search rankings, as confirmed by Google’s David Byttow: “We expect that these personalized annotations will help sites stand out by showing users which search results are personally relevant to them… We’ll also start to look at +1’s as one of the many signals we use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services.”
2. Once you click on a +1 button, a link to the content will appear under the +1’s tab in your Google Profile.
3. The +1 Button is not the same as Google Buzz – 1’s do not allow for comments.
4. By placing the <script> tag at the bottom of the document, just before the body close tag, Google says you may improve loading speed of the page (which is another factor Google takes into account in terms of ranking).
5. Google says by adding +1 buttons to your pages can help your ads stand out: “By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more–and better qualified–traffic to your site.”
6. The button is not available on mobile search results yet.
For more information on the Google +1 Button, you can visit Google’s website.
Simply change value=”yourdomain.com” to the name of your domain.
The Ideal Search Box
Is there such a thing as the ideal width of a search box? Studies found that the average search box is 18-characters wide. Unfortunately, most search queries contain more than 18-characters. The problem with short boxes is that even though you can type out a long query, only a portion of the text is visible at a time, making it difficult to review what you’ve typed.
Search boxes are better too wide than too short – so users can quickly review, verify and submit the query.
You might have your own opinions about Google, but you do have to admit that they offer some top notch tools for webmasters, such as the Google Analytics and the Google Webmaster Tools.
Think Google Webmaster Tools is too advanced for you? Well, let’s look at some of the ways you can make use of the Google Webmaster Tools.
1. Has your website been compromised by a hacker?
No one wants to think about their website being hacked, but the fact is that it happens, quite often. This is especially true for blog or website owners using open source platforms (ie. WordPress).
An example from Google Groups about how a webmaster found adult keywords hidden in his website.
2. Are there broken links on your website?
Say you changed your WordPress permalink structure but forgot to make all of the necessary updates and changes. Result – broken links within your website.
What are the challenges that companies with an international web presence face?
Domain Name
SEO begins with domain name selection – this is true whether the website is to be promoted locally or internationally.
Try to register a ccTLD for the country you’re targeting. For example, if your business targets the Canadian market, try to register for a .CA domain name. However, do remember that many countries require you to have an actual physical business location in that country before you can obtain the ccTLD, this is particularly true for the .CA domain name as well as the .DE (German) domain name).
Why? Search engines try to rank the most relevant search results for the user. For example, Google will default a user in Canada to its Google.ca search site and will feed results it thinks is more relevant (ie. .CA might be a better result then .COM)
Web Hosting
The closer the servers are (geographically) to the site visitors, the faster the pages will load as a greater distance means there are probably more nodes for data to pass through before it reaches the user.
If you are aiming to target a specific audience, you should use a country specific domain extension (ie. .ca for Canada, .uk for the UK), use local web hosting and focus on building links that come mainly from sites in that geo-location. This way, it allows the search engines to easily determine where your market is and more effectively rank and display your website in search results.
Language (keywords, etc.)
Developing optimal keywords requires a thorough understanding of your product/service and matching that with the search terms that are likely to be used in the target country and language. This is not a task that you want to rely solely on Google Translate or other translation tools.
What is the best way to get all pages on a multiple-language website indexed by search engines?
One suggestion is to get separate domains for each language of your site.
Why? By getting separate domains for each version/translation of your website, you will be able to arrange exchange links for the main page of each of the versions, which in turn can drive up the link popularity of each. Also, as mentioned before, search engines give precedence to websites in the searcher’s own country and country-specific domains. When you go to Google’s Japanese website, you will see the URL: www.google.co.jp (Japanese) or www.google.es (Spain).
An alternative is to place each version/translation into a subfolder. If check out Microsoft’s website, you will see that their language sites look like this: http://www.microsoft.com/el/gr/default.aspx (Greek).
4. Click on “Update”.
