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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. 

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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