SEO & Social Media Tips

Introduction

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is, “How do I get my site indexed by Google?”
This post is my attempt to answer that question.
If I have left anything out or you know of any other way to get indexed quickly then please share with the class by leaving a comment below.

1. Submit your RSS feed

If you have a new blog then you most likely already have an RSS feed created for you.
What’s you want to do is make sure that you submit your RSS feed to various RSS feed aggregators.  You can read more about submitting your feeds and a list of directories here:
Submit Your RSS Feeds to RSS Directories
The most important of these is Google reader:
http://www.google.com/reader/
If you don’t have an account with Google reader I highly suggest that you get one.  Whenever you submit a new RSS feed to follow with Google reader it notifies Google of the site’s existence.

2. Google bookmarks

Google along with other major search engines has given people the ability to have their own customized home page.  Part of this customization includes having a list of bookmarks of sites the user wants to visit again.
Anytime Google sees a bookmark on someone’s page I suspect that they add it to their list of sites to visit.
If you’re not familiar with the Google homepage just go to:
http://www.google.com/ig
Hotmail and Yahoo also offer similar services and I highly recommend you take advantage of them.

3. Use Craigslist

Another creative way for Google to notice your new site is to get a link on Craigslist.
Now this is a little gray hat or black hat depending on who you ask so please don’t abuse it.
So what you want to do is go to Craigslist for some large city like Chicago and then look for Gigs and then for writing.
You’re going to post something under Gigs >> Writing about how you are looking for a potential writer for your blog.
Be sure to include a link to your website with the proper keywords in the anchor tag.
For example:

<a href="http://mysite.com">My keywords here</a>

Google crawls Craigslist frequently and will find your link.
I highly suggest doing this only once in one city.
Another side benefit of this is that you might actually find a good writer to help you produce content for your site.
Please don’t abuse this.

4. Post comments on blogs that don’t use nofollow

Posting relevant comments on blogs that don’t have nofollow in their links is another great way to get indexed very fast.
For more information on how to find blogs that don’t use nofollow go here:
Why nofollow matters and how to find blogs that don’t use it

5. Buy links

If you have some money and very little time then simply buying some links might be the easiest way to go.
There are several services out there including:
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com

6. Article marketing

Writing articles and submitting them to Ezine Articles is another good way to get indexed quickly.
I have covered article marketing in depth in several previous blog posts:

• Advanced Article Marketing
• VIDEO: 2 Tricky Ways To Get More Traffic From Article Marketing
• VIDEO: Article Marketing – How To Get Tons Of Traffic And Opt Ins
• VIDEO: Article Marketing – How To Choose The Best Titles
• Article Marketing – How To Choose The Best Topic For Your Niche
• Day 18: Article Marketing
• Stop The Article Madness & Start Making Cash!
• Article Marketing Basics

7. Social media

Social media can be a great way for you to get exposure to your site.  But submitting your site to zillions of different social media sites can be a major pain.
Services like onlywire.com have really simplified this process.
I made a short video that shows you how onlywire works:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/1570_video-social-bookmarking-made-easy/

8. Link exchanges

Link exchanges are one of the oldest ways for people to get exposure to their website and get indexed.
You can search Google looking for link exchanges but that’s kind of a pain and can be very time consuming.
Luckily there are services like linked market http://www.linkmarket.com where people looking to exchange links come together.
Also checkout 3 places to find reciprocal linking partners

9.  Become the Top Commentator on blogs

This method takes more time than the others but can help you get indexed and build tons of backlinks super fast.
The method involves placing a few comments on a blog so you show up on their list of “Top Commentators” which gives you a backlink to your site. The best part is that this list (with the backlink to your site) is displayed on every page of the blog.
It’s all a little complicated and have written a 1,000 word post detailing the process:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/1620_super-fast-back-links/

10.  Get Free One-Way Backlinks

This post will give you a free one-way backlink with no strings attached:

• http://nickstraffictricks.com/3300_free-back-links-to-your-site-2/

11.  Harness The Power Of StumbleUpon

My very best source of traffic is StumbleUpon.  Checkout my stats for the last week:

What you need to do is signup for an account with stumbleupon.com and stumble one of your pages on your sites.
Then if you can get one of your friends to stumble it too then you’ll start getting traffic.  All you need is 1-3 people to stumble your site.
To help you out, I will stumble your sites if you like:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/can-i-stumble-your-site/

12. Create a Sitemap – A sitemap is an XML document on your website’s server that basically lists each page on your website. It tells search engines when new pages have been added and how often to check back for changes on specific pages. For example, you might want a search engine to come back and check your homepage daily for new products, news items, and other new content. If your website is built on WordPress, you can install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin and have it automatically create and update your sitemap for you as well as submit it to search engines. You can also use tools such as the XML Sitemaps Generator. 

13. Submit Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools – The first place you should take your sitemap for a new website is Google Webmaster Tools. If you don’t already have one, simply create a free Google Account, then sign up for Webmaster Tools. Add your new site to Webmaster Tools, then go to Optimization > Sitemaps and add the link to your website’s sitemap to Webmaster Tools to notify Google about it and the pages you have already published. For extra credit, create an account with Bing and submit your sitemap to them via their Webmaster Tools. 

14. Install Google Analytics – You’ll want to do this for tracking purposes regardless, but it certainly might give Google the heads up that a new website is on the horizon

15. Submit Website URL to Search Engines – Some people suggest that you don’t do this simply because there are many other ways to get a search engine’s crawler to your website. But it only takes a moment, and it certainly doesn’t hurt things. So submit your website URL to Google by signing into your Google Account and going to the Submit URL option in Webmaster Tools. For extra credit, submit your site to Bing. You can use the anonymous tool to submit URL’s below the Webmaster Tools Sign In – this will also submit it to Yahoo. 

16. Create or Update Social Profiles – As mentioned previously, crawlers get to your site via links. One way to get some quick links is by creating social networking profiles for your new website or adding a link to your new website to pre-existing profiles. This includes Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, Google+ profiles or pages, LinkedIn profiles or company pages, Pinterest profiles, and YouTube channels. 

17. Share Your New Website Link – Once you have added your new website link to a new or pre-existing social profile, share it in a status update on those networks. While these links are nofollow, they will still alert search engines that are tracking social signals. For Pinterest, pin an image from the website and for YouTube, create a video introducing your new website and include a link to it in the video’s description. 

18. Bookmark It – Use quality social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon. 

19. Create Offsite Content – Again, to help in the link building process, get some more links to your new website by creating offsite content such as submitting guest posts to blogs in your niche, articles to quality article directories, and press releases to services that offer SEO optimization and distribution. Please note this is about quality content from quality sites – you don’t want spammy content from spammy sites because that just tells Google that your website is spammy.

Sources nickstraffictricks, blog.kissmetrics