How to appear in Google in 18 hours

As you can tell from my previous blog posts I have been blogging on this site (at the time of writing this post) for less than a day, a day in which I set out to have this site indexed by Google. That means I wanted to appear on the Google search engine results page within 24 hours of launching this site.

Well folks….I did it!

Now isn’t that a pretty picture?

So, to save me from gloating for the rest of this post I’m going to tell you how I did it.

I registered the domain name www.idoseo.co.uk with Godaddy on the 20th May (2009) and left it until last night when I activated my hosting and set up the site.

I am using an open source publishing application called Wordpress for this blog and have chosen to use the Wordpress hosting option offered by Godaddy to house the site and can highly recommend both of them if you are interested in setting up a personal website.

I installed Wordpress onto my database on the Godaddy site (a 5 minute process) and went off in search of a theme for my blog.

After searching through loads of articles with titles like, “100 free best amazing Wordpress themes”, I (literally by accident) stumbled across a very clean and concise theme designed and published by a small full service digital agency in Missouri (USA) called Midmodesign (thanks Bryan and Josh).

I downloaded their theme and added it to my directory and then logged into Wordpress to begin the customisation. I added a custom favicon ( That’s the big white “S” beside my site name on your web browser) and tweaked some of the html, I then plugged in all the extra little bits and pieces that are made available to you through the Wordpress admin console.

Now here is where the SEO bit begins.

Five steps I took to be indexed on Google within 18 hours:

• Post content to your website

I know it seems terribly obvious but one of the first things I look at when reviewing SEO is the content being published to the site. Make sure you have relevant, unique content that provides value to your users, it’s as simple as that.

• Install Google Analytics

There is a very good chance that you’re going to want to see who is visiting your site and measure your blogging success with a set of metrics. So why not install Google Analytics , It’s free and it starts the process of getting on Googles radar.

• Set up Google Adwords

Don’t worry, you won’t have to spend a penny. Go to the Google Adwords site and set up an account. Google will guide you through all of the stages necessary to start running a paid search campaign. Once you have put it live, immediately go into your account and pause all of your campaigns. This has put your site on Googles radar again, and it hasn’t cost you a penny.

• Tweet

I know it seems silly but yes, Tweet about your site the day you launch it. If you don’t already have a Twitter account then click through to the site here and sign up. It’s a very elegant sharing tool which is great for SEO and will definitely be in Googles future plans.

• Claim yor blog in Technorati

Technorati is simply a search engine for blogs, to claim your blog all you need to do is click through on the link and select the “Join” option from the navigation, it is a very straightforward process which will also give you an excuse for another blog post see my post: http://idoseo.co.uk/online-marketing/claiming-a-blog-at-technorati/ .

And here endeth the lesson…. ok just kidding, I’ll blab on for a line or two more just to summarise.

I am being entirely honest here, it only took what I have detailed above to be indexed within the Google search engine result pages in 18 hours.  SEO is not some dark and magical art, in fact, the more complicated you try and make it, the more you’ll often find that your SEO results suffer because of it. keep it simple, keep it honest, and you can see SEO results within 18 hours of launching your website.

Try it…. I dare you.

Love,

Callum