If you have a new blog, whether you are blogging on WordPress.com software , then don’t be surprised if you can’t find it on Google or on Yahoo or Bing immediately. It can take from 4 – 6 weeks or more to add any new sites, but this post contains ten tips for expediting the process.
What to do to get your site indexed if you are a wordpress.com blogger.
(1) Be sure your visibility settings for your blog do allow search spider access, and you know the correct URL for your blog (Tip: no wordpress.com URLs contain “www”).
I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers – This is the setting used by most blogs. It lets everyone read your blog and allows your blog to be included in search engines and other content sites.
(2) Use ismyblogworking? to see if what you can’t find has actually has been indexed. ismyblogworking.com will now double-check if your robots.txt file has a rule that would prevent Googlebot or the other main search engines from indexing your posts. It checks each of the post links listed in your RSS feed against your robots.txt file to confirm that the search bots are allowed to fetch them. If you’ve forgotten to change your Visibility setting to allow search engines, it’ll warn you.
(3) Set up a Google Webmasters account and verify ownership your blog with the big search engines.
Is there anything that will expedite the search engine indexing process?
It’s my belief that unique contents the catches wide spread attention can definitely result in quick indexing by search engines. I also believe if you can give a “yes” answer to most of the following questions that the process of getting your blog indexed may be expedited.
(1) Have you applied basic SEO to your posts, including using appropriate anchor text and backlinking to the posts in the most authoritative blogs in your niche, and using appropriate and relevant keywords in your post titles, subtitles and in the natural flow of the text?
Refer to: 5 Google Webmasters Video Tutorials and Two SEO Videos for Bloggers
(2) Do your headlines (titles) accurately describe the contents in your posts ?
(3) Do you understand how to tag and categorize by assigning only relevant tags and/or categories to your posts?
(4) Have you optimized your images?
(5) Have other bloggers backlinked to your posts in their posts?
(6) Have other bloggers chosen to link to your blog in their blogrolls?
(7) Have you encouraged commenting and have your posts received a number of high quality comments? Google looks favorably upon posts that have received high quality comments, and the more of them there are the better it is for gaining search engine attention for your blog.
(8) Have you promoted the posts you have published and established meaningful relationships with other bloggers in your niche?
(9) Have any of your posts “gone viral“?
(10) Have you been a guest blogger on sites with a high PageRank and received backlinks to your blog from it?
Do you have any ideas you would like to share with new bloggers for gaining search engine attention?
Related posts found in this blog:
How Backlinks Will Make Google Your Blogs Best Friend
Blog strategy: Google sandbox or trustbox?
Natural Linking Strategy for Bloggers
Improving your Google Page Rank
Keith
January 22, 2010
Another great way to get indexed fast is to immediately submit your article to a site like BlogEngage which gets indexed frequently and your link there will be followed by Google to index your page too.
timethief
January 22, 2010
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the comment. I’m aware of BlogEngage and the fact that the members are committed to having do-follow blogs which provide backlinks for commenting. I do not wish to have a do-follow blog at this point in time. However, I may wish to do so in the future.
PotatoChef
January 22, 2010
Thanks for the heads up on the “ismyblogworking” site. Good resource!
timethief
January 23, 2010
Hello there Potato Chef!
I hope you are well and happy too. You’re welcome. :)
Arafat Hossain Piyada
January 23, 2010
Other issue are page download speed and website design. The navigation page should not be confusing and should be easily accessible. Another thing I notice many new blogger don’t work on their post title. All major search engine have a limit of character on page title and no search engine love over use of keyword. So, it is important to understand search engine work policy and trying to write articles which are good for readers as well as worthy to search engine.
timethief
January 23, 2010
@ Arafat Hossain Piyada
I do agree with you and have made the same observations. I don’t know of you have read my other posts and my guest blogger’s posts on this or not.
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/12/17/writing-effective-blog-headlines/
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/11/02/why-having-a-well-designed-blog-is-important/
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/09/13/how-to-become-a-better-blogger-6-theme-evaluation/
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2009/06/13/blogging-strategies-for-reducing-page-loading-time/
Arafat Hossain Piyada
January 25, 2010
I yet not read those post but will definitely give my attention. :)
timethief
January 25, 2010
@Arafat Hossain Piyada
G’day. What prompted me to post on those subjects was that beginner bloggers are unaware of the topics and their importance. Yet, they were prepared to rush on to self hosting.
Invisible Mikey
January 23, 2010
Dear tt,
I enjoyed reading your helpful comments for new bloggers, and for me the tech tips help too! Since I’m a “word guy” I’m happy just writing for the most part. I wish I had read your advice on hosting services before I wasted $100 bucks. I’m much happier at WordPress.com doing it for free.
timethief
January 23, 2010
@invisible mikey
Thank you so much for your kind words. I appreciate them very much. Have you read this post? http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/13/self-hosting-whats-your-hurry/
I think far too many bloggers think they must move onto self hosting when they lack the skills to manage a self hosted domain, have yet to develop blogging skills, and have little understanding of basic SEO and how to apply it to their blogs and posts.
Many are driven by the “make money” motive and others think that certain “features” are a must have. I say stay at wordpress.com and purchase a domain as early as possible to avoid the broken URLs and lost PageRank scenario in the future. Then learn learn how to blog and use basic SEO effectively. Undertake due diligence if you intend to blog for money, and after you have a clear picture of where you are headed make your move.
I won’t be surprised to see some of those who have left with $$ signs in their eyes retuning to wordpress.com when they discover just how much traffic it takes just to make a few dollars from Adsense.
Thanks for making the time to comment and best wishes with your blogging. :)
K
April 3, 2011
Oh TT — I was one of those :). I started off last year after buying my own domain (mostly out of thrill) and starting off a blog using wordpress.org’s software. And guess what ?? I earned a princely sum of $5 through 2010 :)… needless to say I ditched the hosting and paid WP $12 to keep my domain name and now I have more views than ever ! I blogged about my passion (cricket) and currently the cricket world cup and got more than 10k views and that just made my day after a torrid couple of months at grad school :D…
Luckily I got out in time and back into WP and managed to limit my losses to $30 !
timethief
April 3, 2011
Hi there K,
Your story is not an unusual one. So many rush off to make money (ha! ha! ha!) or because they want to tweak a theme (she rolls her eyes). I’m so happy to hear you have so many views after your return. Wlecome back and blog on! :)
Nita
January 23, 2010
I started a new site and it took a month or two to be indexed regularly. What I found was that when I started posting regularly the googlebot started to visit. And of course I did the verification thing, which I think is very important. However my blog being in a niche it is unlikely that I will get any links from blogs, and that is why I went to the blog directories and such.
About your reply to Mikey, I must mention that I am on blogger and I find it quite convenient, specially when writing posts. It is much easier to handle, and faster than than wordpress. Yes, I did choose blogspot because of ad revenue, knowing fully well that it may be very little. However little it is, it is still something. I have been on blogger for almost six months now, and while I love wordpress, I think blogger has it’s good points too.
timethief
January 24, 2010
@Nita,
Hello and thanks for commenting. My apology for approving this comment yesterday and not responding to it immediately. Best wishes with the new blog. :)
Alex
February 14, 2010
Howdy,
Just wanted to point out that ismyblogworking.com will now double-check if your robots.txt file has a rule that would prevent Googlebot or the other main search engines from indexing your posts. It checks each of the post links listed in your RSS feed against your robots.txt file to confirm that the search bots are allowed to fetch them. If you’ve forgotten to change your Visibility setting to allow search engines, it’ll warn you.
timethief
February 14, 2010
@Alex
Thanks do much for the valuable comment. I’m editing the post copying and pasting it above so readers don’t miss it.
jeufille
February 20, 2010
c’est interessant , merci pour l’info !
timethief
February 20, 2010
Vous êtes bienvenu. Blogging heureux !
golfthere
April 2, 2010
Thanks for this! The ismyblogworking link is perfect. I was starting to wonder if I had been found and it seems that we have. Now I just need to get to work on comments and inbound links! Appreciate this.
timethief
April 2, 2010
@golfthere
Thanks for the positive feedback. Come again soon y’hear. :)
oranuak
April 10, 2010
I can see that you are putting a lot of time and effort into your blog and detailed articles! I am deeply in love with every single piece of information you post here. Will be back often to read more updates!
Douglas K.
April 15, 2010
Guys, it’s happen to all my 2 blog…my eldest blog until now not appear at Google search engine or any search engine. my eldest blog is 1 year plus. and i make another blog, i done everything about how to make it appear on search engine, and I have check meta tag analysis with 2 blog that is one is mine and another blog is my friend blogs, the result is surprising me, he blogs contained more Urls, and doesn’t have any meta tag, but my blog was working good, not contained more Urls, only the size is big. and why does his blog is show up at google search engine, but not my blogs?? Now i almost give up how to make my blog appear. Somebody could help me with this.
timethief
April 15, 2010
I cannot help you with this. It’s matter that must be rectified between you and the search engines.
1personofdifference
May 10, 2010
Thank you for your helps and tips. I for one am amazed at the insult slung your way in the help page by that person that accused you of having mental issues.
Having been a Christian for many years (38) I have always believed you treat everyone the way you want to be treated whether you agree with them in everything or not.
I am new to blogging, I was brought to WordPress.com because I’ve seen some high quality blogs here and I want to put my information out to the public here. Twitter and Facebook have their place but there is something to be said about a respected blog spot as your focal point as well.
Thank you for your help. Do you mind if I link you to my blogroll in case any newbies are looking for help in the future?
Thanks,
Brad
timethief
May 11, 2010
@Brad,
I was saddened by that comment even though I replied with humor. The stigma that people who do have mental health issues endure is unacceptable and it grieves me. Worse still is that she entered the thread again and characterized me in a nasty way and accused me of rudeness. SIGH … all we have to do is click “member” under any username and we can see every comment they ever made. I have never been rude to this person. I have answered all of her questions to the best of my ability. I appreciate your attempt to assist me but in situations with bloggers like her I find myself at a loss for words. No matter what I say it will be likely to provoke her so I’m not dignifying her personal attacks with responses.
Thank you for the kind words about my blog. I’d be delighted if you chose to place onecoolsitebloggingtips.com on your blogroll.
Best wishes for great blogging. :)
Eric C.
June 3, 2010
Thanks for the information.
timethief
June 8, 2010
@Eric
I’m so sorry your comment got missed. You’re welcome.
Albert Chan
June 15, 2010
Hi I just stumbled upon you site as I’m relatively new to blogging. Your 10 tips are definitely very helpful, especially considering I have never really thought about SEO optimization before, much less knew what it means. I still have much to learn so thanks for the help:)
timethief
June 16, 2010
Hi Albert,
I’m so glad to hear that you found my content useful. You’re welcome. I hope you will become a regular reader and commenter too. :)
Albert Chan
July 6, 2010
Yes the content you wrote is extremely easy to read so props to you! After reading more of your advice I decided to change the domain name of my blog to better reflect where I’m coming from with my posts, that way I can better target a specific niche and have a more concise general heading or topic.
timethief
July 6, 2010
Good idea and best wishes. :)
newgirlorder
July 6, 2010
wow what a great blog. I am learning all kinds of new things. Thank you!
timethief
July 6, 2010
Thanks for letting me know you are finding what you need. Happy blogging. :)
Dr Janardhana V Hebbar MD(Ayu)
July 7, 2010
I have heard it from google that spending a few bucks on google adwords will never help to improve google search visibility in any possible ways. But since I did it once, for just a month, I am seeing a minimum 5-9 google links in my referree link list of admin. (previously I used to have none. )
I am not trying to say that google adword is a way to get more publicity. but atleast, google will have a decent look at ur blog and its content, I suppose.
Any buyers for my theory?
timethief
July 7, 2010
Most but not all of my readers and subscribers have non-monetized blogs. The ads you may see on this blog or any other free hosted wordpress.com blog from time to time are implemented by wordpress.com and we bloggers derive zero income from them. I think you would do better floating your idea on a make money blogging forum than you will here.
Dr Janardhana V Hebbar MD(Ayu)
July 8, 2010
oh! sorry. I presented my idea in a wrong way. What I meant was –
In an attempt to reach more of visitors of the target country, I had used google ad which I made an ad with google (google adword?) and bid for selected keywords for a month period (spending around 500 rupees = 10 USD) after a month. During this month, I started getting the google referrers to my site. (roughly 3-10 visitors per day). After a month, the ad expired. But now, there is regular in flow of referrers from google.com. Even my blog belongs to wordpress.com and I know that any kind of advertisement is strict no here. I too derive zero income from my blog.
I just shared my experience. May not be generalized, I suppose.
But, being a non profit blog owner, if a wordpress.com blog, advertise with google, don’t you think that google will consider our blog seriously?
I am not saying that everyone should advertise with google to get notified by google. But in my case, it has happened so.
Dr Janardhana V Hebbar MD(Ayu)
July 8, 2010
sorry again for the grammar mistakes.
Kingshan
October 16, 2010
its very frustrating to know that my blog is no longer visible on google search after changing my blog templates..
timethief
October 17, 2010
I cannot help you with this. Perhaps it’s more than a template change that has caused this. Recent changes to Google have resulted in over-optimized blogs falling off the SERPs and duplicate content has also caused many to fall out of the SERPS as well.
eugengreenfileds
March 3, 2011
thanks alot; I thought I was being tricked when i tried searching my blog on google and it didnt come out
timethief
March 3, 2011
You’re welcome. :)
RNobilityNotraEin
March 3, 2011
Hello, I had received a response from you in forum. Wanted to say, thanks and that I hope to receive your blessing/response? I actually am glad to have found your site, as well I am one who believes firmly in altruism, and giving though I indeed need work. Thanks for your input, great site…
Much Blessings and Success,
Rich
timethief
March 4, 2011
It’s good to hear you found my advice and site to by useful. Thanks for commenting.
Jennifer
April 3, 2011
I can’t believe I haven’t been by yet to tell you how much I love the title of this post (it always puts a smile on my face) and even more the great info found in it.
timethief
April 3, 2011
Thanks Jennifer. :D
Pedro
April 12, 2011
I have a blog since 30 december 2009: http://forjadordelunas.wordpress.com/
But I can’t find it on google.
What’s the problem?
I don’t know how question directly to wordpress.com
Pedro
timethief
April 12, 2011
This is the link to the wordpress.com support forum http://en.forums.wordpress.com/?new=1 if your posts are not being indexed that’s between you and the search engines. I can see that you are “spamdexing”.
By that I mean you are posting a huge blog of irrelevant tags on each of your posts. Doing that can result in search engines refusing to index your content. See here as well > http://en.support.wordpress.com/global-tags/#missing-posts
When it comes to assigning categories and tags to posts – less is more! Use only relevant categories and tags. Use no more than a combined total of 10 categories and tags which accurately reflect the contents on any given post.
aandrusiak
June 15, 2011
Thank you so much for this info.
However, I was trying to prove my owneship of my blog for Google by trying to insert the Google verification code in my blog, and I COUDN’T FIND where the blog code is edited! Actually I couldn’t find it neither in my WP blog, nor in my Blogspot blog.
Can you please help me with it?
timethief
June 15, 2011
I have removed the section on blogspot blogs from my post as Blogger changed things at their end since I published it. You will have to find the Blogger help forum to ask about how to verify your blogspot blog.
Also note that WordPress.org blogs are not verified in the same way that WordPress.com blogs are verified. You will have to ask for help here http://wordpress.org/support for verifying it.
ACW
June 23, 2011
Thank you so much – this was very helpful. I have put up a few links on my blog so others can benefit from your great blog too! :) I’ll also post you on my twitter! Thanks again :)
timethief
June 23, 2011
Thank you very much. :)
Phil
January 21, 2012
It is nice to finally find someone giving actual info as opposed to selling the site (Google Blog) Being a new (brand new) blogger and wondering why my blog wasnt visible on google search I, with interest, clicked onto ismyblogworking. everthing is ticked OK except not listed on google index. I guess there is nothing I can do about that.
I have to say I have been dissapointed. One thinks that creating a blog is a simple way of posting you travel (I am off for 4 weeks) photos and info so parents and friends (and anyone) can see what i am upto.
But now I see that it isnt. After many emails to blogger help and google help, all i get is them trying just to promote and get as many people on as possible to create more revenew (a la facebook) as opposed to actually making it simple and easy to use.
Thanks for any help you might be able to give me as regards parents (old) who do not understand too much ..oo apart form on/off button and “why is the text so small”, helping them find my blog.
All the best
Phil
London
timethief
January 21, 2012
It takes time and frequent posting of fresh content to get the attention of search engines. It starts by setting up a Gooigle Webmasters Account and verifying your blog ownership with the major search engines. There’s a special process for free hosted WordPress.com bloggers to use. http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools
These videos are helpful when it comes to searchability.
Refer to: 5 Google Webmasters Video Tutorials and Two SEO Videos for Bloggers
Anyone who can access the interent is cpable of using keyboard shortcuts to increase or decrese the size of the font on any site they visit. It’s very easy to do. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/19/how-to-change-font-text-size-in-your-browser/
Phil
January 22, 2012
Thanks very much for your swift response…..and thanks for the help.
All the best
Phil
timethief
January 22, 2012
Hi Phil,
You’re welcome.