As a business owner, if you afford importance to your website then applying a close eye to marketing on Google is a vital first step. Not only is Google one of the most heavily used websites accessed on the internet, it plays a huge part in your marketing plan. Many articles and tipsters offer specialist insight into how to get Google to feature your website above the rest, but the truth is much more simple than that - if you play by the rules within Google's framework you will be on the correct path
We've offered a few ideas about how to get started in Google.
Create a Google Account - this doesn't need to be a chore, just go to the Google home page and click on the sign in link top right and you can create a new account in there using your existing email address, nothing easier than that (apart from the activation).
First step done!
Tell Google you're out there - this needs to be done in the right procedure. Firstly let Google know you are the site owner so when you sign into Google, click your name top right on Google and then the account link to take you to your Google account dashboard. On the left you should see a "products" link follow this to see what products you have in your personal Google portfolio and if you can't see the icon for the webmaster tools, go here to sign up https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ . You should see a red box offering you to add a site, click on this and you will be able to add the full URL (web address) of your website. Now Google will ask you to verify the website is actually yours (really a formal acknowledgement that you have access to the website!) by either uploading a meta tag or, and easier, to upload a confirmation html file. This will be something like google71b4e3e3f40eaab543.html simply transfer this onto your website (or ask your web contact to do this is you don't know how to do this)
Second step done!
Webmaster Dashboard - the next steps, creating a site map
Now you need to tell Google what pages to look for. You may have 5 or 500 web pages knocking around your website, more if you run database-driven catalogues or the like. It's important you let Google know what pages to expect to see and this is guided normally by a sitemap. (Quick history lesson: a sitemap used to be a nicely laid out HTML file which acted as a directory for human visitors - these have largely been superseded by XML versions which provide search engines with a clear map of pages). Unless you know XML, we recommend popping over to the http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ site and creating your own free one there. Simply enter your full URL into the box and select how often you update the website (or leave it as none). If this is the first time you're uploading a sitemap, then you don't need to worry about modifications or priorities, they will come later on (in another blog update to follow). Let the process run on the XML-sitemaps website (they have a nice progress monitor) and the site will let you download the final XML file. Save it locally and upload it into the root of your website (normally www/httpdocs/public_html folder).
Now pop back to the webmaster tools and click on your website and then on the Optimization link on the left to expand it to see sitemaps etc. on the submenu. Click on the Sitemaps and click the red button top right to add/test a sitemap. You should be presented with a popup which has your website address followed by a small box which you will add the name of your sitemap into. Typically the file is called sitemap.xml and this is what you would enter in there. Click the submit sitemap and your page will reload. Now we wait for Google to process the XML file which can take a few hours, so we can keep ourselves busy with a few more tasks.
Step Three Complete
Fetching as Google.
One thing which has been added quite recently is to request that the Googlebot (the software used by Google to trawl the web for new information) come to your website and that the internal pages are indexed and stored in Google for searching.
To do this, click on the webmaster tools and the Health category. Expand this to see the menu sub-items and you will see Fetch as Google which will permit you a limited number of round trips to your website from Google. Click the red fetch button and the page will tell you that it is pending and the page will refresh itself whilst it queues up the fetch exercise. If it's quite a quiet time of day (tip: do this early morning UK time as the US is sleeping and it works faster then!) you will see the Fetch Status as pending and you may be given an option to fetch URL and linked pages. Click this and this will queue up a complete index of your website.
Step Four Complete.
Please come and see us...
Adding to Google. Back in the early days of webmaster tools it used to be necessary to tell Google to please come see me by visiting http://www.google.co.uk/addurl . Whilst this is largely overtaken by webmaster tools, it's still worth doing as I've experienced better uptake of websites when running through this measure than skipping it. It's simply a case of submitting your URL with some hideous captcha images and you're done.
Step Five Complete
Add Analytics.
This could have been done at any stage, but we tend to put it at this point in the list for no other reason than it's just another part of the process. There are occasions when you may want to tie webmaster tools into analytics for commercial reasons, but for simple steps let's proceed.
Easiest thing it to get your way back to the Google home page > Your Name > Account > Products or browse to www.google.co.uk/analytics/ if it's your first time setting up Google analytics.
You will need to add your website as a new account (follow the steps for single domain set up) and then you will be presented with tracking code which you will need to add within the section of your website. Your website designer can assist with this, you will need to add it onto each and every page you want to track visitor access to, as gaps can appear which make for awkward results.
Step Six Complete
Submit your website to Google Places
Once this is done, you can now finish your set up with a final visit to Google Places at www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/ and submit your business into the new Google maps for businesses which (depending on how central your business is within a town or city being searched) will eventually (there's a verification step in here, use your mobile phone to activate the listing, you can remove this number later) be listed in Google Places, the place to be found for businesses seeking to use the entire Google toolbox.
And that pretty much sums up the potted process to start getting your site listed in Google. The next steps are getting your website found in Google which is a much tougher battle.
Happy Promoting
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