yahoo indexing | Russel Ray Photos

Yesterday’s post about Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf started out as a simple post about The Freedom Tree on the campus of San Diego State University. It turned into a much more extensive post about Lt. Col. Scharf.

As I began my research on Lt. Col. Scharf, I turned to Google, of course. Simply entering Lt. Col. Charles J. S immediately brought up Scharf’s name, and a click took me to the POW Network.

I finished the post, published it, and then went to read it on my proofreading computer.

SIDE NOTE ON HOW TO PROOFREAD
Change your environment!
If you work mainly on one computer, when you go to proofread, go to a different room or a different computer, or put a cat on your desk. Anything to change your environment. The newness in your environment will help you proofread better. You could also ask someone else to proofread. At the very least, take a 10-minute break; don’t proofread something you just finished working on!

When I proofed it, I realized that I had left out the link to the POW Network, something that I definitely wanted to include.

When I went back to Google to find the POW Network again, I probably could have typed POW Network into the search bar. I didn’t, though. Instead I typed Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf. Look what Google presented to me (click on the image for a larger, more readable version):

Notice the very first entry in the search results? Yep. It’s my WordPress post! More importantly, though, notice that my post was published “2 mins ago.” “Mins” is short for minutes. Just two minutes after I published my post, Google had already indexed it!

So, how do I accomplish getting Google to index my site so quickly? Keep reading if you’re interested. Go play with the cat or dog if you’re not.

Blog persistently and consistently! There is a reason why this is #1 on my list. Google, Bing, and Yahoo (hereafter, GBY) won’t come by every minute to index you unless you prove to them that you are worth the effort. Blogging persistently and consistently (hereafter, P&C) proves that you are worth the effort. You don’t have to do anything else. Just blog persistently and consistently. GBY love fresh content. Your P&C blogging gives them that fresh content that they love so much.
Use tagging and keywords. GBY love help, and if you can help them, they’ll love you for it. However, GBY understands when you are trying to trick them, like formatting inappropriate content to be invisible text, or using tagging and keywords that have nothing to do with the subject matter of your post.
Provide quality content. Ranting and raving about last night’s date isn’t defined as quality content.
Provide tags, keywords, and alternate text for your pictures and other graphics. GBY cannot look at pictures because they don’t have eyes. If I want pictures of Zoey the Cool Cat to be indexed, I tag them with “Zoey the Cool Cat,” keyword them with “cat pictures,” and provide alternate text, like “A yawning Zoey the Cool Cat in her basket under the piano.” GBY will love cat, basket, and piano, and possibly yawning. And she’ll get indexed as Zoey the Cool Cat. Want proof? Look at the Google search results for “Zoey the Cool Cat” (click on the image for a larger, more readable version):
The first ten search results are from my blogging, and I have ten of eleven on the first page of Google!
Be consistent in using your tags and keywords. If I want Zoey the Cool Cat to show up consistently in search results, I always tag her with “Zoey the Cool Cat,” never just “Zoey” or “indoor cat” or “cat on desk”….
Make your blog posts between 300 and 700 words. Apparently GBY think that less than 300 words is not worth reading, and more than 700 words loses the reader’s interest. Once GBY know that you are worth their effort, you can publish some posts that don’t abide by this rule and still get indexed.

Getting results like this is called “organic search results.” It will take some time, so the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get results, especially if your actual intent is to use your blog to sell products or services, like I will be doing with my Photographic Art venture.

I started blogging on the WordPress platform on January 6, 2012. Previously I had blogged from July 2007 to January 2012 on a real estate blogging platform where I was trying to sell my home inspection services. That real estate blogging platform’s only purpose was to help its members sell their real estate services, so I learned a lot of things over there.

One of the most important is to pick a good blogging platform. GBY loved the real estate blogging platform I was at because 90% of the posts were about real estate, and there were 250,000 of us. That’s significant. WordPress is significant because there are several million users. Thus, if you’re blogging to sell products and services, and you have no experience, use the free wordpress.com platform. GBY know and understand wordpress.com, and you’ll get indexed faster. Once you start getting indexed regularly, you can upgrade or change to a self-hosted site and still get indexed regularly. Just be sure you link your wordpress.com blog to your upgraded name (my upgraded name is russelrayphotos2.com, but if I look at the title bar right now, it shows that I am at russelrayphotos.wordpress.com) or self-hosted site so GBY can find you and know that both sites are yours. Whatever you do, though, don’t delete your wordpress.com blog until you’re absolutely sure that you have GBY’s attention at your new site. Since wordpress.com is free, though, I would never delete it anyway, at least not until you no longer sell the same products and services.

When I first started blogging at wordpress.com. GBY would come by about once a month. You can see this on your stats page. For example, I would have 25-50 visits on any given day. Then, suddenly, I’d get 500 visit on one day, returning to 25-50 visits on following days. On that 500-visit day, those were search engines coming by to index my blog. You can see that on your stats page, too:

Each month, GBY will come by your blog and index all the posts you have published since last time they were at your blog.

Notice in the screen shot above that my best ever number of views was 1,583 (upper right corner). That was on February 14, 2013, 13 months after I started using the wordpress.com platform. Look at the number of views by search engines from that day:

That was the day when GBY decided to put me in their algorithms and watch me every minute of every day. They decided that I had good content, fresh content, and could be counted on to publish a post each and every day. I could publish a post at any time, and within five minutes be on the first page of GBY search term results for keywords and tags that were in the post.

If you can’t publish a post each and every day, try every two days, every three days, once a week, even once a month. But be P&C, and if you can’t be P&C every day, then pick a day and time, and be P&C for that day and time. I would submit, however, that if you are trying to sell your products and services, blogging P&C each and every day should be the #1 thing on your daily list of things to do.

P.S. This post got indexed by Google three minutes after I published it. Google Google loves me( and how to get Google to love you!).