Method Two – Get Spidered by Submitting a Sitemap

You should also get spidered within 24 hours using this method, though it’s been known to take longer. This isn’t why it ranks number two though.

While submitting a sitemap and keeping it updated lets the major search engines know what they missed picking up at your site during a crawl, it’s a method that doesn’t carry any extra benefits the way linking does.

Being linked from an authority or resource site in your industry carries with it the implication that your site is also a relevant resource in that category. Anchor text can give strong hints to the terms you should be ranked for, clues that search engines often follow.

On the other hand, this is a relatively fast method of being spidered, and can fill in any pages that were missed. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation – get spidered first, then submit your sitemap.

Here’s where to get more information about submitting a sitemap.

To Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap
To Yahoo: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
To MSN: http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/04/11/discovering-sitemaps.aspx

Many other search engines don’t have clear protocols for sitemaps yet, but you can let any search engine know where your sitemap XML file is by including it in your robots.txt file. (A file in the topmost html folder on your server that indicates where the search spiders have permission to go in your site, among other things.)

Just add this line, replacing the address with the full link to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

You can get more information about sitemaps at http://www.sitemaps.org/ .

Coming up, the third, slowest way to get found by search engines that most people use when they should try these two methods first.

Popularity: 2%

convert this post to pdf.