chedstone.com

I think it’s always an exciting moment when I find that my site has been indexed by Google (nerdy, I know…it’s great). When I work with other clients and see their content is also indexed, it makes me a little excited. This time it happened without even using Google’s URL submission form.

I track the status of and submit a sitemap for all the site’s I host or have created, through Google’s Webmaster tools. If you don’t have a site setup yet, it’s pretty easy, just follow the steps on Google’s site. You can track information like:

• When Google last visited your site
• URL’s Google couldn’t crawl
• Most linked-to content
• The top search queries bringing people to your site

And of course, you can also submit a sitemap to Google, so it knows what pages to crawl on your website. If you run a Wordpress based website, you can use the Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator Plugin by Arne Brachold. Not only does the plugin generate a sitemap for submission to Google every time you post, but it also pings Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com to come check your sitemap. Very cool.