HappyJoblessGuy.com Guide to Earning and Investing
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22 December 2007
There are many ways you can take to boost the popularity of your website. To start off, however, I want to show you a way which you should NOT take.
Add your URL to Google
It is called "Add your URL to Google". Many of you have used it. To find it, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/ There, you find the page where you can submit your URL to Google. So you diligently type in your website and click on the "Add URL" button.
If you think that's all you need to do, for Google to index you, boy are you in for a long wait! The trick is, you DO NOT WANT to tell Google "here I am!" Instead, you want Google to stumble onto you. Hence, I would regard the "Add your URL to Google" as the least effective means of getting yourself indexed by Google. Any other way is preferred to it.
Use the Google Webmaster Tools
Adding a sitemap is to me a much preferred way to ensure the Google spider crawls your website. First you need to prepare a sitemap, which lists all the pages of your website. The sitemap has to be in xml format. A good name for it is simply sitemap.xml. To create this xml file, just go to your HTML Editor and save an empty file using the .xml format.
As for the content of your sitemap, this is how it looks like:
Just replace yourdomain above with your own domain name, and change pagename1 with your page name. To submit your sitemap to Google, use the Google search engine to look for "Google Webmaster Tools", and follow the steps. Google Webmaster Tools are an enhancement to the Google Sitemap, with lots of features for you to check the quality of your webpages.
I would recommend that you watch this video by Matt Cutts, who is with Google, and is very much involved is the setting up of the Google Spider. Hear what Matt has to say:
I am not a big fan of link exchange. I have received plenty of request to exchange links, and most of the time, I find that the other website never honour their part in providing me a link, after I have placed one for their website. In the end, I decided not to depend on link exchange. For my websites that are already enjoying a high PageRank, I find that I am on the losing end by exchanging links with a website with a lower ranking. Moreover, how many links can I put on my website? Placing links on your website also dilute the possibility that your site visitor will click on your Google AdSense.
Mention your URL
Take every opportunity to mention your URL. Place it at the bottom of your signature. If you participate in online Forum, mention it. Give people every opportunity to visit your website. Each time you add a link of your website somewhere, you are boosting its popularity.
Of the ways I have mentioned, my favourite way to boost the popularity of your website remains to write articles. This, followed by mentioning your website whenever possible. In the end, what you yourself do to your website will determine its ultimate popularity better than waiting for the popularity to come to your door. It is something that you need to do, diligently, unceasingly, every day.
In our next article, we will look at onpage optimization. That is about how you can improve your pages so that Search Engines find them. To make sure you receive the next installment of HappyJoblessGuy, add yourself into my distribution list to make sure you don't miss out. All lessons are provided free with no password protection. If you find what I have written is benefitting you, feel free to make a donation - the amount is entirely up to you.
The Happy Jobless Guy's Way of Earning & Investing
If you wish to have a face-to-face conversation with me about my way of earning and investing, you make book an appointment with me - on the condition that it is done in Penang, and I do not have to travel far to meet up with you. I make myself available for one-hour sessions at RM100 per session. The purpose is to give you an insight of what I do which you may want to follow. I do not guarantee what I do will be applicable to you nor is it a session to share private details of my earnings and investments. It is to show you the things I do which you may want to consider for yourself. To book a session, contact me at the following email address:
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