Getting indexed in Google and making our websites available to the world via the top search engine remains one of the biggest challenges for webmasters, myself included! It takes more than just submitting your URL to Googles directory, so I have taken it upon myself to find out a few things about how Google works, what services it has available, and how to get in, and stay in!

To get your site listed in Google, you will have to submit your URL to their directory, but it will take quite a while for them to get to your site and have it listed and reviewed for a page rank. In the meantime, there a few things you can do that will help get your site noticed. Google has something called Google Base which allows you to describe your products or services on your site that Google will make searchable. Because you are using words directly related to your site, this feature can bring you targeted visitors, and may be included in the Google search index and other places around Google. Google Local is another feature of Google that will allow you to enter the same type of description of your products and services on your site, but to an even more targeted audience those people searching for specific products and services in a specific local area. If you are looking for ways to advertise without spending a fortune, this is one way to do it!

As we all know, blogging is becoming one of the most effective ways to advertise online. Google offers something called Google Blog Search where you can list and post your blogs for additional traffic to your site, and you can post multiple blogs, a specific blog, or even an entire blog. Since content is what attracts the search engines, both by blogging and submitting articles, Google also has a feature called Google News where you can submit articles, along with your picture which will get featured by the top search engine. All it takes is visiting the American Chronicle website, submitting an article, signing up to be a contributor, and submitting your articles that will be syndicated on Google News to the millions of readers every day! You can even submit a press release to Google News via PRLeap, and if you really want to get fancy, you can create and index a video or infomercial for your site that is indexed by Google with Google Video. You may want to take advantage of this feature as audio and video feeds are becoming a more and more popular and effective means of reaching customers online.

This all sounds great, and you can be going along thinking everything is fine and dandy, but then suddenly you discover that your site has been banned by Google and you arent sure why. One thing that can get you banned from Google, meaning your site cannot be found when searched, is trying to put hidden keywords on your page to get a higher ranking - words that your visitors cannot see, but that the search engines can see. People will cram these words onto their sites in various ways both on the page itself or in the meta tags, or repeat keywords they think will give them a higher page rank but will only get your site banned.

Something else that is bad for your Google Page Rank is linking to a link farm, or a directory of links from everywhere with no real categorization to it, or linking to another banned website. Sometimes you will be linked to a site with good PR, without realizing that that site has actually got hidden or repeat keywords that later get that site blacklisted. Unfortunately you have no way of knowing this is happening to you and thereby decreasing your own page rank unless you check your link partners on occasion to make sure that the sites you are linking to have not been blacklisted by Google. You do want to exchange links and get one-way links pointing back to your site from sites with a higher PR than your own and which are not banned sites.

As you can see, there are many ways to use Google that people are not aware of, if they just visit the Google site and find out what features it has that they can use to their benefit and for free. As long as you stick to the rules in putting your site together, and link to high PR sites, you should be on your way!