Transcript

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is “How do I get my site into Google?” And the process is a very easy and simple one.

There’s actually one of two ways to get your site found by Google.  The first way is to have another website that is already listed in Google link to you.  This can be done in various ways:

• If you’re a regular on a forum in the same industry that your website is about, you can add your new website in your signature.  Forums, especially active forums, tend to get indexed quite regularly.
• You can write an article on the same topic as your website and submit that article to places like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com.  Both of these places get visited very often by Google.
• You can leave a real (not spammy) comment on a regularly visited blog.  Typically when you leave blog comments, the blog owner allows you to add your website URL.  Be sure however that the blog is a “do follow” blog.  That is, they allow the search engines to follow the links off of their site back to the site source.  Click here for a list of do follow blogs.

The second way to get your site indexed by Google is to submit your sitemap to them.  A sitemap file is a list of all the links contained on your website and is Google’s preferred way of finding and indexing your website.

Sitemaps are XML web pages that are created for the purpose of letting the search engines know about all of the pages on your website and they’re essential for getting all of your web pages indexed in a search engine.

Although XML format of a web page might sound a little intimidating, you’ll be happy to know that there are plenty of services online that will create one for you.  http://www.xml-sitemaps.com is one of them.

Once you have a good set of pages created for your website, you can simply tell xml-sitemaps to create a sitemap file for you which you can then move to your web host.  Once there, you’ll want to create a Google Webmaster Tools account at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and then submit the sitemap URL to Google.  This way, Google will be notified that you have submitted a sitemap and will generally visit that page within 24 hours; oftentimes less.  Aside from a search engine robot finding one of your pages through a link, this is one of the best ways to notify Google that you have a new website with content.

While Google doesn’t always guarantee that they’ll crawl your sitemap, you’ll generally find that they do so within 24 hours of you submitting the sitemap to them.

In our Premium BoneheadSEO membership, I discuss Google’s Webmaster Tools in depth.  Visit http://BoneheadSEO.com for more information.

Using either or both of these ways will get your site indexed in Google.

Everyone who runs a website has at one point or another worried about whether or not their site is being silently penalized in the search engines for having duplicate content.

Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page let’s first define what duplicate content REALLY is.

When you have two pages that are identical to one another on your own website, this is considered duplicate content.  And chances are you likely have duplicate content but you just don’t know it.

Here’s why that would happen…

Let’s say that you have a website located at http://www.Example.com.

You create a new web page on your site and have a few people link to that page.

• Person #1 links to you using http://www.Example.com.
• Person #2 links to you using http://Example.com (notice the lack of the “www”).
• Person #3 links to you using http://www.Example.com/ (notice the trailing slash).
• And Person #4 links to you using http://www.Example.com/index.html (notice the “index.html).

To YOU and to the people visiting your site, this is all the same page.

To the SEARCH ENGINES however, these are all different URLs. Surprised?

So as far as the search engines are concerned you have 4 pages on your site that all contain the same exact content – hence, the duplicate content issue.

You see, search engines can’t tell that these are the same URLs (I’m shaking my head as I say that because it’s still beyond me), but, the fact remains, that this is in fact, very true.

So how do you fix this issue?  Well, thankfully, there’s a few ways to fix this issue.

1. When you link internally, that is, link to other pages within your own website, consistently use the same URL.  ALWAYS use http://www.Example.com or http://Example.com -whichever one is your preferred way of linking, choose one and stick with it.
2. Additionally you can also use a 301 redirect to point to your preferred way of linking to your URL.  For example, if you prefer http://www.Example.com then set up a 301 redirect on http://Example.com, http://www.Example.com/, http://www.Example.com/index.html, etc.  (I’ve listed below the most common ways people would link to your site).
3. Within your Google webmaster tools area you can TELL Google what you’re preferred way of linking is.
4. Be sure that when you submit a sitemap for your website that within that sitemap, all of the URLs are using your preferred way of linking.

Some potential issues are:

1. If you don’t have direct control over the webhost that administers your files, you’ll have to have someone else place that 301 redirect on the URLs you want.
2. A lot of free web hosts don’t let you create a 301 redirect.
3. Session IDs on a website can create a huge duplicate content issue.  Since each page may be accessed with a different session ID in the URL, that page may be indexed multiple times; even though it’s the same page.

Now if all else fails and you simply can’t implement a 301 redirect to your preferred way of linking, then consider placing the canonical link element on the individual page.

In the head of the individual web page you’d place the following:

<head>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.Example.com/page.html” />
</head>

Note the trailing slash after “page.html”.  This is very important to include.

The bottom line is, using the canonical link element on your website is EXTREMELY beneficial to you.  But first and foremost, use the methods listed in the first four items at the top and if those fail, then use the canonical link element.

This information has summarized what Matt Cutts said in his 20-minute presentation; but if you want more information, here’s a few more places you can check out:

• The Matt Cutts video.
• The blog post at Google webmaster central.
• Yahoo’s blog post.
• Microsoft

And, as promised, here’s a list of URLs that are all different in the search engines eyes and that might cause duplicate content issues:

• www.Example.com
• Example.com
• www.Example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/index.html
• www.example.com/Home.aspx
• example.com/Home.aspx

Here’s the breakdown:

• No Spam.  Ok, not exactly “new” but they’ve reiterated it…again.
• No more X-rated material.  So if you’re in that market, you might want to start considering moving your material to a new home or changing the Squidoo content page(s) you are using to comply.
• No “Junk Topics”.  Now, “junk topics” mean different things to different people.  Just what constitutes a “junk topic”?  Well, here’s Squidoo’s list of them:
  • Drugs/Pharmaceuticals
  • Weight Loss / Dieting
  • Affiliate Lenses promoting affiliate programs.
  • Gambling
  • Credit Card Debt, Mortgages, Currency Trading, Envelope Stuffing, etc.
  • Hate Lenses (now, my question is, why has this not been a “Squidon’t” already?)
  • Ringtones
  • Lyrics Lenses.  According to Squidoo “…a serious copyright issue.”  But, according to an article on USA Today from NMPA not necessarily.  As a matter of fact, she pretty much says “we don’t care if you’re not making any money off of those lyrics.”
  • And a few “…harder to generalize, but obvious when we see them.”  In other words, it’s our opinion what stays and what goes.  (Does that sound familiar to you?)
• There’s a new limit on overly-promotional lenses.  They state “…this doesn’t mean you’re limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole lens…just 9 to the exact domain.”  However, they also state “any links generated by Squidoo modules (like Amazon or Wikipedia) don’t have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Zazzle module) or modules that your readers post in…”  Do with this information what you will.  They’re practically telling you exactly what to do.They’re also whitelising Allposters affiliates and placing Clickbank affiliate lenses in the middle ground; not whitelisting nor blacklisting.

If  you’re worried about any of your lenses, don’t worry, you still have time to act.  None of this will take place until Mid-July so you still have time to export your content if you feel as if your lens(es) might get dinged.

The entire piece is listed here for your reading pleasure.  Note though that you do have plenty of time before these changes go into effect and if you do read the content (which I suggest you should) also take the time to read what they’re *not* saying.  In other words, read between the lines because you can come up with some great ideas for future use.

And no, I’m not saying to try and “game” the program.  They’re flat out telling you what’s acceptable and what’s not if you want to stay listed but they’re not playing Google at this point and just “doing it” without your knowledge.  As a matter of fact, they even give you some great advice.  I suggest you use the information they’re handing to you.  It’s a lot more than people usually get.