Getting Your Site Indexed All Over Town With Google, Yahoo and Bing
(Start by creating your Google Webmaster Tools account, Bing Webmaster Tools account, and Yahoo Site Explorer)
Years ago it was a total hassle getting search engines to add your site to their index. Now, it’s so easy and there are a number of ways to bag that gold. This is the way I do it and in the long run, this method has a lot of extra benefits. Add the website to Google WebMaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing WebMaster Tools.
Since 85 % of all searches in general are done on Google, if you only want to do this once, this is the one place you should pick. Every SEO and Webmaster should have a Google WebMaster Tools account IMHO. I made a Gmail account and I used it as my ID for my main Google WebMaster Tools account, and everything else Google offers.
There are a bazillion things you can do with your Google WebMaster Tools account but for now we are going to create it and use it to get your site indexed. The first part we will cover in this tutorial and that’s just:
- getting the WebMaster Tools Accounts created
- adding your websites
- obtaining your meta tag verification strings
- authenticating your site
There is another important step for getting your site indexed and it involves creating a sitemap.xml file and reporting it to your WebMaster Tools account. For the express purpose of keeping novice WebMaster’s Head’s from exploding too early in the game I’ll hold that off for the next tutorial !!
*Note there is an alternate method for authenticating a website that I am not covering in this tutorial. If you do not want to add a meta tag to the index file of your website, you can add an ascii verification file to the root directory of your website for all 3 major SE’s. Instructions are in the respective WebMaster Tools Help systems.
Add Your Site to Google Webmaster Tools
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/:
Add Your Site to Yahoo Site Explorer:
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com:
Add Your Site to Bing Webmaster Tools:
www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/:
When you have all 3 of your WebMaster Tools accounts all setup, and you have your verification strings… go to your index.html for an HTML website or your header.php fpr a WordPress website and add the 3 strings to the HEAD section like this and you are ready to authenticate:
