Guess what will be the most frequent asked question(faq) for a novice bolgspot blogger???.......and the answer is "I can't find my blog/site on Google: Where is it?" yup that was the obvious question in my mind when i first created a blog "Beginning of Cold War II" and after going through several articles, i got an insight of all these things and now i want to share my experience with all of you and one more thing is that, though this blog is dedicated mainly for Intelligence breifings and serious concerns regarding the explosive military growth of China. I am posting this article under this blog because it`s the most important part for a novice blogger to get everything started, ya this article helps to list your site/blog on Google.
To be very simple, Google maintains an "Index" like an index of a book and serves to your query [ for e.g. if search keyword is "Indian army" then it will lookup for that searchword in index" ] and based on the relevancy of results pages are displayed, so your sole aim is to register yourself to that index. In google`s term relevancy/popularity depends on 200 factors and is popularily known as "PageRank" to be simple it defines the importance of your page on the web, greater the page rank more appealing your web page and greater chance of indexing. Second thing is Googlebot(an algorithmic program) uses "Web crawlers" - Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches, so greater crawling to your website/blog means frequent updation of index of your page.
Many bloggers think that they create a blog at Blogspot and it will automatically be listed. If only things were that simple, you should be able to understand the importance of Search Engine Optimization(SEO) i.e. optimize your site such that(generally by using Meta Tags) it will top the list of search results, as the earlier the site appears in search result the more visitors it will recieve from the search. Now we have covered a short introduction on Google. It`s time for action :
Step 1. The first way to get listed in Google is to use their "Add URL" form located at: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Step 2. Another good way to help Google find your blog is to get a backlink from a site that Google has already indexed. A backlink is an incoming link from any website or blog pointed to your blog. As crawler will crawl through this link.
Step 3. If you haven't done so yet, submit a sitemap of your blog "Webmaster Tools" to increase your site's visibility in Google. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2172a84d24b88442&hl=en Here`s a link that will also provide useful checklist/information while dealing with Webmaster`s Tool.
Step 4. You can ping them directly. http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Step 5. My personal opinion is that browse through two or more sites and post comments on them especially on this site http://bloggertricks.com/2008/01/wowhow-fast-google-crawling-this-site.html#comment-form, though comments are generally not followed by crawlers but i personally believe that on some site it works, it`s a way of providing back links i.e some other`s site who is now well indexed is pointing at you.
One more problem, I have faced is lazy updation of my site on Google's index....I update my site frequently but it`s hard to index them on google, but I learnt that if you have many inbound links to your site and lot`s of patience then surely you are gonna make it....google wants content - I found it the most important of all above steps if you really have some serious contents on your site/blog then you appeal a lot to Google....above of all is to notify google everytime(1-2 hour gap between two notification is necessary) you update your blog/site by "Resubmitting" to Google. I think this article will help you on resubmitting....you hav to just send an HTTP Request to google. Here`s is the link for it http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34609
Note: Above findings/research are true to my knowledge but if I am wrong at some point then please inform me about it by posting comment...because what I personally believe "You learn, I learn and together it will be a discussion"
Below are some links for - Increasing PageRank/Blog Promotion/SEO/Crawl Rate Increase :
