Add your URL to Google

I had an old friend ask me today how to submit his website to Google, the short answer was to send him a link to: Add your URL to Google, but I went ahead and elaborated as to how I approach Google submissions.  The first thing that I do is to submit an XML sitemap, preferably a dynamic sitemap that changes when new pages or posts are added to your website.  There are several plugins for doing this with some of the cms solutions that are out there, I know of at least two for WordPress.  Once you have your XML sitemap location, usually something like http://website.com/sitemap.xml then you will want to submit it through Google’s Webmaster tools section.

Once I have submitted the website xml sitemap to Google I will also take it a step further and verify the domain on my clients behalf.  This can be handled two ways, one way is via meta tag.  This meta-tag can be generated inside the Google Webmaster Tools panel and is simply added to the head of your pages and then verified inside the Webmaster Tools control panel.  Another method that is sometimes easier unless you are doing a lot of Apache redirection is simply uploading an html file.  The filename for this file is also generated somewhat randomly inside the Google Webmaster Tools section.  Once this is uploaded and in place, you simply click to have Google verify that this file is in place and then you are all done.

While this is not all that I do for a client project upon it’s launch, it does cover a lot of the seo for Google that I do directly.  Indirectly I have some other strategies that I do not care to divulge for free! Another recommendation that I have for do it yourself web people is to go ahead and put Google Analytics in place on your website prior to launch.  This usually entails adding a piece of javascript to the footer of your site files that will interact with Google’s Analytical tools.  Hope that you find this helpful.  (…And Marvin, if we can help you guys out with your project just let us know! :-))