If you’re wondering why your blog never shows up in Google, you’re not alone. This seems to be quite a popular question and although I can’t make any promises, I can certainly give you a helping hand.
Registering your blog with the major search engines (That’s Google, Bing and Yahoo) is one of the first things you should do. It won’t guarantee you a place on page one of Google by any stretch, but it’s a good start. Once done, you’ll at least know that you can be found. Now you just have to worry about making your blog worth finding.
Before we start, I should warn you that you’re going to have to register your details with the search engines. I know this’ll bother some of you but I can honestly say that since registering, I’ve never had any spam from them.
OK, lets go.
1. Have a look down the left hand side of your dashboard and look for the section marked, Tools. Now click the Tools option in that section.
2. At the bottom of the Tools section you’ll see Webmaster Tools Verification. It looks like this:
(click to enlarge)
And WordPress have made life nice and easy for us by including links to all the relevant Webmaster sections.
3. Go ahead and click on the link for Google Webmaster Tools (I recommend opening the link in a new tab) and if you don’t already have a Google account, now’s the time to sign up for one.
4. Once you’ve signed in, you should see the Google Webmaster Tools home page. And look, there’s a convenient button marked “Add a site”. Give it a press and a box opens for you to fill in your blogs URL, like this:
5. Having entered your URL, you can press continue and go to the the Verification page. It’s here that you’ll be given your Meta Tag, like this:
(click to enlarge)
6. Notice that it says “Not Verified”? Well, now you’re going to verify it. So highlight that Meta Tag and copy it. If you opened the Google Webmaster Tools link in a new tab, just pop back to your WordPress Tools section. If you didn’t, click “Verify Later” and go back to you blog the usual way.
6. This next bit should be obvious. You are going to paste that code into the Google Webmaster Tools box in the Webmaster Verification Tools section. Don’t forget to click the “Save changes” button.
7. OK, back to Google Webmaster Tools and click that verify button.
And you’re done. Easy, wasn’t it? Now you can do the same thing with Yahoo and Bing. They’re essentially the same so if you can do the Google Meta Key, you can do them all.
Having done this you can now be sure the search engines know where you’re blog is and they can find their way around it. So you have no excuse for not filling it with lots of interesting posts.
Useful stuff Algernon, well done!
Why thank you. We aim to please.
Hmmm, this afternoon may be a twiddling with wordpress one.
With any luck, I’ll be posting this kind of stuff all week, so clear that diary.
Thanks for this, I had no idea this even existed. Your instructions are really clear. A couple of questions:
1. How do I know that the registration has worked? Would WordPress or Google have told me if something was wrong? I wish stuff like this always gave you a ‘successful’ message.
2. Is there any difference between a URL starting with ‘www.’ and one starting with ‘http://’ ? (the reason I am concerned I haven’t done it right)
Thanks, Gilly
Hi Gilly, glad you’re enjoying my new blog.
To answer your questions:
1. Checking your registration is just a matter of signing back into the Webmaster Tools section of the search engines. You’ll see any error messages reported there. But as long as you’ve followed the instructions, it should be fine. However, be aware that it can take a few days for it to all settle down.
2. In theory, there is no difference between a URL starting WWW. and one starting http:// But as far as registering your blog goes, I would try to make sure that you register the URL exactly as it appears when you are on the home page of your blog.
Hope that helps.