Tue Oct 02 14:04:18 PDT 2018
Every web page or site you access by conducting a search using google, yahoo, Bing or Baidu has been indexed. That is why you can type a search query and get results. Internet users have so much relied on the use of these engines for information sourcing. This is because it is easier to reach quality resources that way than to hunt for websites using addresses you might not even remember. Research has revealed that websites that appear topmost in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) get higher click rates. As a blog or website owner, that is exactly what you want to see. You want to feel relaxed that your blog posts are visible to many and can attract organic traffic from search engines. One thing is however needed as step one to achieving this and that is:
Submitting your blog for search engines indexing.
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You definitely need to get your blog indexed on popular search engines to begin. Getting to the top of SERPs is an issue of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) whose journey begins when you get your blog indexed. I guess you have heard so much about this. Yet you are in the anxiety of how that can be done. Maybe you even think it is not necessary to do so because you believe that once your blog is published, it accessible. Well, the truth is that your blog can be accessed once published or created, but with limited reach by visitors and potential users. Some of the visitors will be those from your outreach and the adverts you conduct. Just as you would have thought, adverts don't happen without cost burden. You will pay for adverts whether on social or print media.
Even with such effort, the number of visitors your blog will receive will not be satisfying. This is because you have to keep these adverts up to maintain or increase visits. At periods when you decide to stop the adverts, the publication of your blog will dwindle gradually towards the initial path of low visits. The chances are that visitors can recommend your blog to friends if you offer quality contents that are worth disseminating. That will be a boost for you. However, to increase the number of visitors to your site and reduce expenses on paid adverts, you will have to make the contents of your blog available for indexing.
Meaning of indexing
If you've ever worked in a data centre or submitted your data may be for a job application, online account creation or bank registration, you will somehow get a glimpse of what indexing is. When opening an online account, you would have provided some of the following information: your name, email, password, picture, contact details, educational background and so on. This information is stored somewhere for future use. Let's assume you provided the information for employment and later got the job, a quick search can be done on the employer's database to display staffs in a particular department using the department's ID (index in this case).This is not very different with search engines, though SE store different information compared to the above illustration. Search engines store information about your blog to cover geographical location, keywords, type, post titles, contents, length, date of publication, pages, sitemaps, external and internal links, hosting platform and so on. This information enables them to display expected and related results from search queries. Your blog's information gets stored with identifiers called indexes to help the engines conduct quick searches at a lesser time. Without the index, the crawlers will have to pick the query string and compare with every blog across the internet to determine suitable resources. However, that will have to keep searchers waiting for hours before getting results.
What are Search Engines?
Search engines are web technologies for searching and indexing web resources on the internet. They are like prototype spiders or crawlers, as they are known, that crawl the internet in search for newly published websites, pages, posts and uploaded contents. They do this following complex algorithm which is updated time to time to keep up with the ever-changing web platform. With search engines, you can easily search for information using custom searches and keywords to get precise results at a faster speed than going to a library to source for the same information.How they work
Search engines are sometimes called crawlers or spiders because they are known to crawl contents on the internet. Just like a spider would crawl through the perimeter of its web for trapped preys, search engines crawl the internet for fresh contents. Each search engine operates on well-defined algorithm and search procedure that helps to identify and given unique identity (index) to web resources such as web pages, videos, images, documents and applications. With this indexing, the resources can be uniquely identified enabling the engines to compare search strings with indexes stored in special databases.
Benefits
1. Quick Searches
Assume that you have 200 billiards balls of which 100 are in a bucket and the remaining 100 are scattered across your room in bags, containers, etc. Now a friend comes with a green billiard ball requesting that you bring out all the balls with green colour. You have to search the locations for the balls, but the search will be faster with the 100 in the bucket because they are in an easy to reach location. The others will require a great deal of time to sort.By indexing, search engines can easily search through the web pages in their databases and compare with the search string to display results within seconds. By submitting your blog or website for indexing, you help improve the rate at which users conduct searches and access information. Search engines can easily run queries against several billion indexed pages in their directories.
2. Information sharing
The internet is generally a communication system that allows the interconnected system to share information. Your website is one of such information point. Since internet users utilise search engines for obtaining relevant information, you contribute to their research knowledge by letting them access your contents. In other words, indexing your blog makes it easier and quicker to share your ideas, expertise, discoveries, experience, and documentaries with other people. Such can help you to build a community of followers and earn their trust and patronage.3. Blog optimisation
Publicity is key when it comes to registering an online presence with a blog or website. Except for few reasons, nobody will build a blog or website only to hide it from users. Most websites built are to allow people view their contents and resources. When optimisation arises, in contemporary times like this, the very first thought of every web or blog owner is search engine optimisation.Search engine optimisation, SEO, is a concept that revolves around the techniques and strategies used to make web pages and blog posts rank high or among the top in SERPs. For business blogs, getting a high ranking in search results will definitely increase the brand as more people get to visit the blog.
As a user of search engines, I have realised that the websites that are easily clicked on are those that appear on the first page of search results. Even though getting your blog indexed is a fragment of what you need to do to reach top search pages, it is, however, the foundation, that is where the journey begins.
4. Easy to acquire backlinks
Aside from the aforementioned benefits, having your blog indexed will afford you the opportunity of generating pure backlinks from those that come in contact with your content. This is even more realistic if your posts are highly ranked in SERPs. That would mean, you are offering good content which others can create links to.Popular Search Engines
With several search engines out there, a few of them stand out. Research byNetMarketShare revealed that Google has an almost 96% of search. Google is widely followed by Yahoo, Bing, Baidu and Ask. I have however decided to give you brief descriptions of four search engines ? Google, Bing, Baidu and Yahoo who have revealed as the most used search engines.
Google records daily searches of up to 4,464,000,000. This is a mammoth figure enough to convince you to get your blog under Google's robotic database. On phones and tablets, the percentage moves a bit up to 97.07% of searches. It's no surprise to see businesses making paid adverts via AdSense to make returns. Google's technology, value for money, user-based policy, responsiveness and dynamism to emerging and transitory technologies have made their systems to be widely patronised across the entire universe. If you have ever conducted online research using a search engine, I strongly believe that you used Google the most. It has become a household name in this industry. You can read more on Google Search engine from
here as presented by Wikipedia.
Bing
Bing, which has taken the second spot for the number of daily searches, is owned and run by Microsoft Corporation. Just like most search engines, Bing provides several search features such as video, images, news, and web. This search console has undergone several name changes. Wikipedia noted that the names varied fromMSN Search, Windows Live Search to Live Search. Released on June 1, 2009, Bing replaced Live Search as the main search engine for Microsoft. Bing now boast of a
daily search rate of 873,964,000. You can read more about Bing
here.
Baidu
This is a search engine developed by Baidu to enhance searches conducted in Chinese. The homepage displays Chinese letterings to instantly tell you the group of people it has been developed for. Baidu was founded in 2000 by Robin Li to support strings of Chinese-based search queries. As of today, no search engine has competed with Baidu for Chinese searches. Baidu provides search services to cover several areas, some of which are: Page search, News, picture, video, library, and map. It records583,520,803 daily searches.
Don't get discouraged by the Chinese feature. It is indeed easy to use as pages can be easily translated into different languages, especially to English. To read more, visit the
profile page.
Yahoo
After Google, comes the competition among the other search engines and Yahoo happens to keep sliding down the pecking order. As of February 2015, a report claimed thatYahoo remained the third largest search console behind Bing. However, recent surveys and analyses have seen Yahoo take a downturn to the fourth position behind Bing and Baidu who now occupy the second and third positions respectively. According to analyses by Robert Allen in her Search Engine Statistics 2017,
Yahoo records a daily search rate of 536,101,505 across different platforms. That figure is 88% short of Google's daily searches.
This down-slide can be attributed to the famous
Yahoo data breach that has dented trust and the confidence of users. Yahoo remains a strong competitor in conducting searches.
Submitting your blog to Search engines
Having known so much about what indexing and search engines are and how each of them ranks on daily searches, it is time to submit your blog for indexing by these web spiders. For each of the search engine given below, follow the steps to submit your website or blog using their respective webmaster's tools. Submitting your blog requires just two major steps: creating an account and verifying your blog. I will take a break to tell you how the different verification methods work.Site Verification methods
1. Meta Tag
<meta name="" content="" />
Placing this tag correctly head section of the theme before the
</head> tag will allow the search engine to identify and verify that you are the owner or have ownership rights cum access to the blog or website. This method seems to be the easiest and fastest, but if you do not have access to the administration panel or template markup, it will difficult to use. Luckily, for those using Blogspot, it is much easier. Follow the steps below:
- Login to your blogger account and select the right blog you intend to verify.
- From the list of menu on the left side, click Theme and then Edit HTML. This will open the configuration of the template in use.
- Locate the </head> and place the verification Meta tag you have copied it. If you are having challenges locating this tag, search it up. Simply press Ctrl+F, and enter </head>
If your blog is running on a self-hosted WordPress platform and you are family with cPanel, locate the
head.php file and include this tag there before the closing head tag.
Note: if you are not good in coding, at least the basic, don't try this with your WordPress blog. It can mar everything and return an internal server error.
2. XML File Upload.
To use this method, you have to first download the displayed HTML file after which you upload the same file to the home directory of your blog or website. Try using an FTP application to upload the file. You can equally upload directly from the hosting platform. For bloggers, you can't apply this method. It is most suitable for WordPress blogs and supported by Bing.Here, you are required to download an XML file with the name
BingSiteAuth.xml. This file is then uploaded to the home directory of your blog to verify the blog.
3. Domain name provider/CNAME to DNS
This verification method uses the CNAME record added to the Domain Name Server to verify ownership. If your Domain is among those supported by Google for this method, you will receive detailed instructions on how to include the record. On Bing, a search page will be displayed for you to read more on how to do that. You can also refer to the support pages of your Domain Name provider website or simply contact them for support. Verification through this method is not instant. You will have to wait for at least 24 hours. In addition to that, it is more technical and not just anybody can do it.4. Google Analytics
This method is specific to Google search console and it is easier to use. Once you have a Google Analytics account, add the ID to the head section of your blog to verify. If you face the challenge of locating your Analytics ID, read thispost.
5. Google Tag Manager
This is similar to the analytic method. The only difference lies in the fact that you will submit your Tag Manager ID instead of Analytics ID. This Id is to be placed in the head section of the template before the closing head tag.Submitting your blog
Now, let's look at how to submit your blog to Google, Yahoo and Bing
1. Create an account with Google
If you do not have a Google Account, create one. If you have a Gmail account, don't create another one again. Google accepts one account across all its products. So, you can sign in to several of their websites using that same account.
2. Visit Google Webmasters platform. Click
here to visit Google's Webmasters page
3. Add a property.
Property here refers to your blog block or website. Click
Add property. You will be redirected to the page with a form for entering the address of your website. Type your blog's address in the input field provided. Something like this:
www.myblogaddress.com
Click the
Add button. You will be taken to a verification page with several verification methods as discussed above.
4. Choose the one that is convenient for you and do as required. If your blog is hosted on blogger, use the meta tag method which you should insert to the head section of your blog. For self-hosted blogs with WordPress or other CMS, upload an HTML file.
5. Once you have applied the necessary verification method, click verify. If you properly applied the method, you will receive a success message.
Kudos, you have successfully submitted your blog to Google for indexing.
To speed up the indexing process, do these:
Fetch some of your web pages as Google and request for indexing.
While on the Search console tool, on the side menu, click
Crawl and click
Fetch as Google.
Next, in the input field provided, enter the remaining web address of the page you want to fetch. Let's assume the address is
www.mywebsite.com/index-your-web.html, you will only enter
index-your-web.html into the input field.
Then click
Fetch.
After the fetch is complete, identify the submitted URL below and on the right click
request indexing. The status column will show the stage the page has reached. When indexed, partial or redirected.
You can do the same to submit pages for mobile devices. Repeat the same steps for other pages you want to index. Note that you can only do that for 10 pages in a month.
Bing and Yahoo
Don't be surprised that I am combining Bing and Yahoo together. These two search engines are separately owned by Verizon and Microsoft, yet there is a central control for indexing the blog for both search consoles. Bing webmasters console developed and managed by Microsoft is the control point. Just submit your blog to this console and get search index by both Yahoo and Bing. Let's get started with this:1. Create an account with Bing webmaster facility. Once again, if you already have an account with Microsoft, just log in using that account. It works just fine. Visit Bing Webmaster page
here.
2. Once the login is successful, locate, at the top, the input field requesting that you add a site. Enter the URL of your blog there and click
ADD.
This will open the verification methods page. Select the one that is appropriate and convenient for you to use. Bing presents three verification methods. The first is place an XML file on your web server, followed by copy and paste a
<meta> tag in your default web page and the last, Add CNAME record to DNS.
Follow the required steps and then click
Verify.
Just like Google, you can submit up to 10 links in a day or 50 in a month to hasten the indexing process. To do so, click,
On Submit URLs on the side menu and then enter the addresses of the web pages you want to submit on the input provided. Note that each address must be on a new line.
After entering the URLs. Click
SUBMIT.
Final Words!
Site indexing is a great way of starting off the optimisation of your blog or website. If you ever dream of receiving more organic traffic from search engines, then it would be wise to consider submitting your blogs/websites and pages to these engines.I have technically excluded Baidu from the submission process because the first three search engines are enough to refer traffic to your blog. In addition, Baidu is a Chinese-based search engine. This can be challenging as some translations offered by Google might fail to present the actual meaning.
Take the step today to submit your blogs and if you have already done so, submit your newly published posts and pages. This will hasten the indexing process.
Happy Blogging!
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