Web Site Design for Your Small Business - Part 3

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Get Your Domain Listed on Google and Other Search Engines

If you decide to launch your web site slowly, one page at a time over a period of weeks rather than in one Big Bang - there are certain advantages.

Even if you only load up a single page on day one, you are still free to start the process of getting your site indexed by the search engines - having only one page should not stop you taking this essential step. In fact it is the perfect time to start and because you have started in such a small way, you’ll have honed the page to perfection for human consumption. If you do that well, the search engines will follow.

There are several ways to get a new site listed very quickly (often achievable in a matter of minutes) - the Google sandbox does not always apply (or really exist), and even if it does, it is only because your site has grown too quickly or is too new and addresses a bunch of competitive terms too enthusiatically. These slow launch steps, natural growth steps will help your site avoid the threat of any perceived Google oblivion.

It won’t do you a lot of good at this early stage in terms of visitors to your site, but getting your first page noticed early on is a great foundation for your future web site popularity plans. Why? Well, search engines like to see constant change on a site.

Constant change is of course at odds with a site that launches with a big bang - the message being that that the site is somehow finished on the day it arrives. Adding a new page every week will engage the search engines who really appreciate new content. Use this slow launch time to learn about how to create title tags and description tags properly, and without endangering the site.

An easy way to add a page every day would be to add a blog to your site.

If your main site is at www.mywebsite.com then your blog will be at www.mywebsite.com/blog. If you organise it this way, you can start your main web site with a single page as suggested, but add to the domain every day via your blog. Use Wordpress and Wordpress plugins to enhance the search engine optimization suitability of each blog post.

As your main web site grows it does not interfere with the blog and the search engines just see the web site as a whole becoming richer, more relevant and more themed as time goes by.

Consider the blog to be the place where you put your thoughts and news about the business, and from where you link to each new page on the main site as it grows.

Just doing this will get your blog and your main web site indexed in Google within a few hours.