The key to getting your site indexed fast is telling the search engines that your site exists.  The first step in this process is to submit your XML Sitemap to Google.  I will cover Yahoo and Live/MSN in the next part of my Quick Launch Guide.

Now that your Sitemap is created, it’s time to submit it to the major search engines.  There are a couple of ways to do this for the three top search engines.  You can basically ping the major search engines or open a Webmaster account.

In this step, we will do a quick submit to Ask, Google, Yahoo, and Live/MSN Search.  Please note that Ask.com does not offer a Webmaster account, so pinging Ask is a must.

To ping and notify the search engines of your Sitemap file, you must add your complete Sitemap URL after the “=” and go to that URL in your Web Browser.  Each search engine will notify you whether the ping was successful or not.

One of the quickest single methods to get a search engine to spider your site is to create and submit a XML Sitemap.

In case you don’t know, a Sitemap is a file containing the location of the Webpages that make up your site.  There are some limitations to Sitemaps and that is they can not exceed 50,000 pages or 10 MB in size.  This is fine for most people, so I won’t go into the details about how to create Sitemaps for sites that exceed 50,000 pages.

Sitemaps may also include data about each Webpage such as the date of the last modification, change frequency, and priority.  On the sites I develop, I am only concerned with submitting the URL’s and priority.

Alright, your site is completed and you are ready to launch it into the Internet ocean with your sail set high on a windy day!  It’s an exciting moment, but it’s in your best interest to take a final look at your onpage search engine optimization.

Since your core Website is completed, now is the best time to take a second look at your onpage search engine optimization.  First and foremost, make sure the keywords you have targeted actually generate traffic.  Many times I have seen Webmasters target keywords that simply bring little or no traffic.  Or worse yet, the Webmaster is trying to rank for too many highly competitive keywords on a single page.  Just to verify the keywords you targeted bring in some traffic, you may want to take a look at Google’s Adword Traffic Estimator Tool.  It’s a simple tool to use, and it can shed a light on how much traffic Google could actually send you for the keywords your site targets.  If you need keyword suggestions, then use Google’s Adword Keywords Suggestion Tool.  You can also download and install a free keyword tool named Niche Examiner.

Every now and then a common question is always asked about getting a new site indexed quickly.  While most Webmasters and SEO professionals have different approaches, in the series I will describe my techniques for getting a new site indexed quickly.

Here’s an outline of what will be covered in this series:

I. Onpage SEO check
II. Sitemap Creation
III. Sitemap Submissions
       (a) Google Sitemap Submission
       (b) Yahoo Sitemap Submission
       (c) Live/MSN Sitemap Submission
IV. High Visibility Quick Backlinks
V. General Web Directory Submissions
VI. Conclusion

This series is designed for the novice Webmaster, however more seasoned Webmasters and SEO professionals may enjoy the reading as well.

Alright, let’s get started by doing a little onpage SEO check. 

A while back it was easy to get an edu link from Harvard.  The problem is that they introduced captcha and their was an error with it, so that blocked Webmasters from submitting more links.  Apparently they used this time to clean up their site and rid it of the oubound links.  Well, that captcha problem has been corrected and do-follow Harvard links are now available once again.

Here’s how Webmasters are doing it….

1. Visit this URL: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/
2. Select create playlist
3. Click register
4. Enter name, E-mail, and password (E-mail verification is not required)
5. Click register
6. Click add/edit playlist info
7. Add your title, description, and tags (more tags will get more backlinks)
8. Click update

From aggressive link building campaigns to outbound links pointing to bad sites, Google search engine penalties are alive and well.  And we certainly can learn something from those that have been penalized and recovered from such penalties.

In September of 2007, there were quite a few Web Directories that were hit with a penalty.  The penalty caused even their site names to be nearly dropped from the Google index.  There was quite a bit of buzz in the Webmaster community because many of the top and most respected directories could not be found in Google’s SERPS.

Many in the Webmaster community have been complaining of reduced Google Adsense earnings since the beginning of the year.  It appears we may finally have some answers as to why earnings are down.

Data released on Monday by comScore reports that in January, surfers clicked on 7% fewer ads then the previous month.  Additionally, paid clicks were flat compared to the same period last year.

As most Adsense publishers know, late last year Google modified Adsense ads by making only the Title and URL of the ad clickable.  While reducing accidental clicks and improving value for the advertiser, this has resulted in lower income for Google and their publishers.

Every blog owner, including myself, has to deal with a certain degree of comment spam.  But used properly, blog comments can add value to a blog while helping you to build quality backlinks and traffic.

There are search engines specifically designed to locate “do follow” blogs that pass pagerank.  Instead of jumping on the same train and following these people, let’s look at some search phrases that can be used to find niche specific blogs that are not saturated.

At Google, try the following search phrases.  Replace KW with your chosen keyword.

There are quite a few ways to get backlinks, but unmoderated guestbooks are often overlooked or thought of as an ancient link building method.  Believe it or not, guestbooks are still around and many of them have the cherished pagerank so many webmasters seek.

First, the key to discovering guestbooks is to look for a search operator that will help you find plenty of them.  Searching for “sign guestbook” at Google will return a large list of guestbooks.  Or a search of “guestbook.html” will also return a list of guestbooks once you get past the first page.  For most, it’s probably easier to search for specific guestbook scripts (ones known to not be moderated).  Below are some search phrases I used.