Many people think that all they have to do is create a website or blog and it will automatically be listed in Google’s search and traffic will come. This is not the case at all, at least not for a good long time. Following are some tips to help optimize your site.

Having an RSS feed is one necessary item if you want your site to be shown in Google’s search engine. Blog Search indexes blogs by their site feed, so make sure that your site feed is turned on. If your blog isn’t already listed in Google’s Blog search engine, you can submit it manually. You can also add your blog to Google’s Blog Search at… http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

You don’t have to submit your site to Google in order to be indexed, but Google does invite you to submit your URL to make sure they don’t miss your site. You can submit your site via Google’s free submitting form. You can find it here… http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

If Google finds your site through an automatic crawl, it follows the links from other sites, so it is necessary to link to and receive incoming links from other sites. There are sites that the search engine spiders visit many times a day and getting links on sites that search engines
visit regularly is one of the keys to getting indexed quickly so people can find your site. It helps you climb in search engine results and make it to that first page.

Google views links to your site kind of like a vote for your site. Search engines use the number of backlinks that a site has as just one of the factors for determining your ranking, but incoming links to your blog also means more visitors to your site. So help search engines find your blog by getting a link from a site that Google crawls on a regular basis, one that has a high ranking.

Sites like http://www.submitexpress.com/ can submit your blog to 40 search engines at once. But, don’t get impatient, it can take a new site about a month or more before it’s fully indexed by Google.

Some other things you can do for a blog are…

1. Join http://www.mybloglog.com/
2. Submit your blog to http://www.bloggingfusion.com
3. Join a blogging forum http://www.bloggertalk.net (Make sure to take part in several
forums)
4. Claim your blog at http://technorati.com/
5. Submit your blog to http://spicypage.com/

To find blogs to read and comment on you can browse blogs on http://wordpress.com/. You can find a list of recently updated blogger blogs here. http://www.blogger.com/changes10.g

You can also Browse Profiles by clicking on your interests in your
profile page. For example – Blogging Profiles – http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=i&q=Blogging. If you are looking for a specific subject replace the word Blogging

with whatever word you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for bloggers with an interest in alternative energy, include the words alternative-energy. http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=i&q=alternative-energy

You can also find other blogs to comment on by browsing directories. You can browse blogs at spicypage.com and mybloglog.com. Make sure to leave an honest and informative comment and a link back to your site in your signature file.

Well, I hope this has given you some ideas on how to get your website or blog found by the search engines and onto that first page. Please comment if you have more suggestions or questions.