Getting your site indexed

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

After registering a domain and creating a website, the next thing almost everybody wants is to get
it indexed in Google and rank high. Since we started supporting webmasters in the Portuguese
language market in 2006, we saw a growing speculation about how Google indexes and ranks websites.
The Portuguese language market is one of the biggest web content generators and it’s still in
development regarding SEO, so we decided to shed some light into the main debated questions.

We have noticed that it is very popular among Portuguese webmasters to engage in massive link
exchange schemes and to build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking,
disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on
their sites; other popular issues involve an over-concern with PageRank and how often Google
crawls their websites.

Generally, our advice is to consider what you have to offer, before you create your own website or
blog. The recipe for a good and successful site is unique and original content where users find
valuable and updated information corresponding to their needs.

To address some of these concerns, we have compiled some hints for Portuguese webmasters:

• Be an authority on the subject. Being experienced in the subject you are
  writing about will naturally drive users to your site who search for that specific subject.
  Don’t be too concerned about back-links and PageRank, both will grow naturally as your site
  becomes a reference. If users find your site useful and of good quality, they will most likely
  link to your site, return to it and/or recommend your site to other users. This has also an
  influence on how relevant your site will be to Google—if it’s relevant for the users, than
  it’s likely that it is relevant to Google as well.
• Submit your content to Google and update it on a frequent basis. This is
  another key factor for the frequency with which your site will be crawled. If your content is
  not frequently updated or if your site is not relevant to the subject, most likely you will not
  be crawled as often as you would like to be. If you wonder why Google doesn’t crawl your sites
  on a frequent or constant basis, then maybe this is a hint and you should look into updating
  your site more often. Apart from that in the Webmasters Central we offer
  Webmaster tools
  to help you get your site crawled.
• Don’t engage in link exchange schemes. Be aware that link exchange programs or
  deals that promise to boost your site visibility with a minimum effort might entail some
  corrective action from Google. Our Google Webmasters Guidelines clearly address this issue under
  “Quality Guidelines – basic principles”. Avoid engaging in these kind of schemes and don’t
  build pages specifically for exchanging links. Bear in mind that it is not the number of links
  you have pointing to your site that matters, but the quality and relevance of those links.
• Avoid pure affiliations. In the Latin America market there is a massive number
  of sites created just for pure affiliation purposes such as pure mercadolivre catalogs. There is
  no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and
  produce valuable content that a user can’t find anywhere else like product reviews and ratings.
• Use AdSense wisely. Monetizing original and valuable content will generate you
  more revenue from AdSense compared to directories with no added value. Be aware that sites
  without added value will turn away users from your site before they will ever click on an
  AdSense ad.

You should bear in mind that the process of indexing and how Google crawls your site includes
many variables and in many cases your site won’t come up as quickly in the SERPs as you expected.
If you are not sure about some particular issue, consider visiting the Google
Webmasters Guidelines
or seek guidance in your community. In most cases you will get good advice and positive feedback
from more experienced users. One of the recommended places to start is the
Google discussion group for webmasters
(in English) as well as the recently launched
Portuguese discussion group for webmasters
which we will monitor on a regular basis.