How to make my website appear on Google

I thought I’d take the time to answer some emails that I get from time to time here on my blog.

This week’s question was "how to make my website appear on google?"

I’ve spoken to this topic tons of times at various events and conferences, but the gyst is based on these 3 things.

Relevance (having the words you want to show up for somewhere on your site)

Popularity (having other sites linking to you)

Trust (having a site that’s old, or having older sites link to you)

Now that is an extreme over-simplification of a very complicated algorithm, but let me share some secrets if you’re new to the game and NOT trying to rank for competitive terms.

To get your site into the Google index and appear for searches like YOUR name or business name, directory submissions at places like Business.com, Yahoo Directory and such can help BIG time. Another great trick is using eBay’s Kijiji.ca where for only $1.00 via paypal you can get a link that gets listed in Google pretty rapidly in most cases.

Are you trying to rank for a phrase that’s really competitive? Is it going to be REALLY hard to rank for?

I wrote an entire book on this topic, but if the sites your going up against are really old, or have tons of popularity, you might consider re-visiting the Google keyword research tool for less competitive phrases.

Until next time!