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Sitemaps: Discover the only fast and easy site submission strategy
What is the easiest and fastest way for Google and Yahoo to identify your site and get it listed?
This is an inside question, one that many frustrated SEOs and online business owners are still trying to figure out. The trick to answering this question is to figure out exactly what Google and Yahoo want you to do to get listed; not what you THINK they want you to do. With that said, the tried and true methods for getting Google and Yahoo to index and list your pages have been as follows:
1. Blogging and pinging
2. Submit your website via the standard submission form provided by Yahoo and Google
3. Pay a search engine submission service to do it for you
4. Find out how to create a sitemap for each of the engines to get the spiders to your site (you still have to submit it manually)
These are all decent methods. However, the problems with 3 of these methods are many, and these are just a few:
1. Blog, Ping and submission forms are slow ways to get listed. Who has that kind of time?
2. Search engine submission services can be expensive
3. Using an automated search engine submission service can get you banned, if search engines think you're "spamming."
Of all the methods listed above, both Google and Yahoo prefer that you create a sitemap and then submit your site to them. You create a database file that contains information about ALL of your web pages. You then upload that file to your website and then tell Google where that file is. Google is extremely specific about how the database should be sent, which is in XML format.
By submitting your website in this way, you are reducing your overhead costs to a great extent. You see, when you submit information the old-fashioned way, using the standard submission form we talked about earlier, Google and Yahoo have to convert your information to the XML database format themselves. As you can imagine, this takes time, especially with the billions of web pages being submitted daily. Therefore, those sites that are submitted in the manner and format that Google and Yahoo are already using will have their pages scratched faster...do you see the logic here? With this process, you allow them to visit many MORE of your web pages quickly and easily. This is exactly what Google and Yahoo want you to do.
By submitting your sitemap in your preferred format, you will:
1. Save huge amounts of your valuable time and money.
2. You don't risk getting banned
3. You will get Google and Yahoo to crawl your site pages faster.
So, if you want your site to be crawled, and therefore listed, faster, you need to create and submit the sitemap. In theory, search engines can list your pages whenever they want. Actually, until you get your web pages scratched, they will never appear on the list!
