Note that the difference from one method to another can usually be measured in months (i.e. using one method may get your site indexed in google withing days, whilst using another may take up to 6 months.

Choose the right method for you according to your goal.

Method 1: Submit your site to google

Most search engines – including google – have a Submit site option or Add URL link somewhere on their page. Using this method, all you need to do is type the website address you want to submit (www.YourSite.com) and click the submission button.

1. Go to http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/?continue=/addurl
2. Type in your website address
3. Enter any other information required
4. Click the Add URL button

Something to note: using this method can sometimes take months to get your site indexed. If your goal is to get your website indexed fast, this is not the best method.

Method 2: Get a (back)link to your site on a popular website

This method is one of the fastest ways to get your site indexed. A backlink is simply a link that points back to your website.

Here’s what to do:

1. Find a popular website
2. Add a link back to your website
3. Wait

This is how it works:

Google crawls websites already in its index to check for changes. Generally, the more popular a website is, the more google crawls it.

When google craws the popular website you used, and finds your link, it will follow it all the way to your website.

When google arrives at your website, it will crawl it (how well it’s able to crawl it is down to how search engine friendly your website is, but that’s a different issue). Generally, even if your website’s structure is a nightmare for search engine crawlers, google should be able to index some of your website.

What do I mean by a popular site?

When it comes to indexing, a popular site is one that has:

• a lot of traffic (visits)
• fresh new content daily
• is crawled often (by search engines)
  

Examples of popular websites:

• facebook
• myspace
• active forums where people are discussing various topics
• popular blogs where people are discussing various topics
• websites ran by newspaper / tabloid / media companies (where you can contribute opinions)

My tip for getting indexed fast using this method:

• If you have a social media profile (facebook, myspace, twitter etc) add a link to your website
• If your friends, kids, friend’s kids have a social media profile, ask them to add a link to your website

Something to note: you only need 1 good link to get indexed, but the more ‘good’ links you have, the better this is for your website (different topic).

Using this method you should get your site indexed by google in days.

Method 3: Submit a sitemap to google

This is my preferred method.

A sitemap is a page that contains links to all the pages in your website. The obvious benefit of submitting a sitemap to a search engine is that you’re providing the search engine with the location to all your pages (rather than leaving it to the crawlers to discover them).

1. Create a sitemap for your website (there is a tool here to do this: www.xml-sitemaps.com)
2. Go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools and create an account
3. Submit your website’s sitemap (don’t enter the full URL – just enter the name of the sitemap and the file extension (for example: sitemap.xml)

Note: if this method is out of your scope for whatever reason, use method 2.

Related posts:

1. How to be number 1 in google, yahoo and all the search engines
2. The secret formula for ranking number one in Google
3. My website title and description are wrong in Google

• You need a website
• You need to market ( advertise ) your website

Most people never take the second step and subsequently give up on their Internet venture.

Having a website is the equivalent of having a shop in the middle of the desert; it can have the best stock in the world, but nobody knows it’s there unless you advertise it.

Internet Marketing – explanation
Internet marketing consists of optimising your website and submitting ( advertising ) it all over the Internet. It is an on-going process, just like any form of business marketing: If you get to the first page of Google, for instance, and stop marketing your website, eventually your competition will take over you.

Why you need to advertise
A quick search in Google for the phrase “holiday cottage” returns 2 million results. This means there are at least 2 million pages with this phrase or these words. For the purposes of this search then, every one of these pages is competing against each other.

Now consider the following :-
1. The first page of Google has 10 spots (or 10 spaces for 10 results).
2. There are around 2 million pages competing for the same term.
3. Everybody wants to be on the first page of Google.

You can begin to see where most people’s Internet ‘dream’ starts to fall apart at the seams… To put it bluntly: why would google chose one particular page over another?

Your own website is likely to have competition: do a search for the terms you want to be found for and see for yourself how many pages come up in the results. Perhaps your own website is not in the results – if this is the case, then you already know why this is. Remember: why would google chose your page over any other page competing in the same market?

The truth is of course, that a search engine will favour a well optimised page or website with more valuable backlinks (see link building).

Related posts:

1. I want to be number 1 in google
2. How to be number 1 in google, yahoo and all the search engines
3. My website title and description are wrong in Google