Google crawls millions of websites on a daily basis to update its database and return fresher contents to its users. Considering that Google crawls millions of websites everyday, it should be worthwhile giving Google a hand.Â
Getting your blog crawled by Google frequently improves your blog traffic as Google index more and more of your new pages. Also, the frequency of Google crawling your website is an indication of its value and importance. The more valuable and important a website is, the more often Google crawls it.
Today, I will be sharing Part-I of the blogging tips on how you can get Google to crawl your website and how do you make it to crawl more often.
Tips To Get Google Crawl Your Website
Here’s a list of useful blogging tips that will help you get Google crawl your website.
1. Create a Sitemap.
A Sitemap is a page which contains an organized listing of links to all pages within your website. The main function of a sitemap is to help search engines to better crawl and index the pages of your blog. Hence, sitemap comes handy to those who want to optimize their blogs for search engines.
Wordpress users can easily create a sitemap for their blog using the different available Sitemap plug-ins. The more popular plug-ins are XML Sitemap by Arne Brachhold and Sitemap Generator Plug-in by Dragon Design. Both sitemap plugins are free and are easy to install.
For Blogger users, the Atom.XML that Blogger provides can be used as your sitemap. You can access it by simply adding /atom.xml to your domain. (i.e. http://bloggingmix.blogspot.com/atom.xml). What you should do with your sitemap is what’s more important, which is to submit it to Google!
2. Submit your sitemap to Google Webmasters.
Now that you have your sitemap, the next thing you need to do is submit it to Google Webmasters. If you have a Gmail account, you can use it to gain automatic access to Google Webmasters. Once inside your account, you first need to add your website (not your sitemap).
After you have added your website, you need to do two things. First, you should verify that the website you submitted is yours. You can do this by simply adding a meta tag in your blog. After you verified that the blog belongs to you, you can now submit your sitemap.
2. Submit your website to Google.
Google is inviting you to submit your URL and get included in their index. Although submitting your URL to Google does not guarantee your inclusion to their index, it’s a good start. CLICK HERE to submit your URL to Google. Make sure you take time to read the instructions and reminders provided in the submission page.
4. Link to your sitemap from your homepage.
Your homepage is the most visible page of your blog to your visitors including search engine robots. Therefore, linking to your sitemap from your homepage makes it easier for search engines to find and index it.
5. Submit your blog to relevant directories.
Google encourage bloggers to submit their blogs to relevant directories like the Open Directory Project. Submitting your blog to directories help Google to discover your page and helps improve your page rank. Previously, I compiled 2 lists of directories with good Google Page Rank where you can submit your blog for free without the need for a reciprocal link. (First 50 Directories + Another 50 Directories) Other than submitting your website to free directories, you can also join forums, submit articles to article directories, comment on ‘dofollow blogs’ or become a guest blogger.
6. Work on improving your Google Page Rank.
Websites with higher Page Rank are visited by Google more often than websites with lower PR. It is therefore useful that you work on improving your Google page rank to get Google crawl your website more often, which can result to an increase in your traffic. To improve your page rank, you need to earn more inbound links to your websites. You can also improve your Google page rank by submitting your blog to relevant directories as explained in tip number 5.
7. Update your website content frequently.
Google has officially announced that a website with more content updates will be crawled more often by Google robots. It is therefore important to regularly update your blog content without compromising the quality of your posts. For the same reason, expect to see regular posts here at Blogging Mix.
What else can you do to get Google to crawl your website more often? Check out tomorrow’s post as I share and discuss more blogging tips that will help you to get Google to crawl your website.
Thank you for your time. 
Update: Part II – Get Google To Crawl Your Website
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Hey Rocky!
It’s a nice informative article..
=> Sitemaps
- well, I don’t really fancy it. I think sitemaps are not so “a must” for blogging platforms from my own personal experience.
=> Submittin your sitemap to Google Webmasters.
- urm, I’m having a confusion here, I see the URL “problogger” in your dashboard.. (?)
=> Submitting your website to Google
- I would like to add something here: If you see that without submitting your blog to google, you find google bots indexing your site, do not submit your url to google since this might be considered as a “re-making google bot aware of the existence of your blog” and this is not appreciated by those intelligent bots
=> Updating your website content frequently
- adding to this: from what I have read and understood from different corners of the net, the minimum update or maintenance* you should do is “3 per week”.
A special note:
* Maintenance on your blog can simply be in the form of:
1) Updating or repairing a broken link on an old post on your blog
2) Or simply an small update you do on your articles.
This is a way to notify google bots that you are caring about your blog and hence G.Bots also care for your blog
Sincerely,
- Wakish -
Having sitemaps on my blogs was when I really saw the crawls come faster. Also, and I could be wrong, but when I added adsense to my blog it also seemed to speed up the google crawl.
@ Wakish,
Interesting points you’ve raised. Sorry about the confusion. I got the image from somewhere else.
I also read about updating your blog doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make a post but from personal experience, Google crawls Blogging Mix more often now than before. Check out my SEOmeter Crawl Cycle. http://www.seometer.com/cache/www.bloggingmix.com
Thanks for dropping by buddy.
@ InfoDoorWay,
Another interesting point. I’m not really sure if adding Google Adsense will make Google crawl your website faster. Perhaps I’ll try to experiment some time.
Cheers!
@BloggingMix:
Yeah, you’ve definetly gotta post some articles not just “updating”
That seo tool seem interesting..
Btw, I forgot to mention, the picture you’ve chosen (the big robot one) is very cool.. well done, nice matching with this article.. I’m always fascinated by such stuffs
PS: It’s always a pleasure being around my friend
@InfoDoorway:
Adding adding Google Adsense does not make Google crawl your website faster since the crawler bot and the “adsense” bot have different mechanisms and tasks
Cheers!
- Wakish -
You’re really a big help.
Thanks mate.
BloggingMix’s last blog post..How To Get Google Crawl Your Website – Part II
im very impressed that you broke alexa 100K in 3 months. Im on a mission now to see how far i can go- however for newbie like me although blogging seems easy, i am really confused by all the techie stuff and terminology.
happy blogging
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Thanks for the tips. I will work these tips and see any changes in the future
Hye
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[...] (Punctuation/Spelling/Software Error) – A post written by Rocky John over @ bloggingmix.com shows a list that shows you 7 ways to help you get your site indexed by google, however if you look [...]