Getting Listed In Google - Google HomePages

This is a series of screen caps and directions on getting google to visit your website more often. The blog post about Google Home Pages that explains the reasoning behind the technique, how to test the results, and why you'd want to use this technique is here.

Oct 08, 2005

Get Your Site Listed in Google Faster and Visited More Often

Point your browser to http://www.google.com/ig (if you click that link a new browser window will open and you'll be able to follow along here while you create your own google homepage).

The first screen you'll see is the one below...

If you already have a google account (for gmail, google sitemaps, etc.) then sign in using your username and password. If you don't have a google account, you can create one at the sign in page by clicking "Create an Account Now".

Here's the sign in page...

Once you've signed in, select either of these links (whichever you see) to start adding your information to your google home page.

^or

A new frame will appear to the left...

This is where you showcase your content. If you're running a blog or RSS Feed on your site already, by adding your feed url here you are ensuring that google will be checking your link on a regular basis for new content. And, it only stands to reason that as it finds new pages it will add them to the index quicker.

You can enter a blogger feed url, WordPress feed url, manually maintained RSS Feed url, etc. (If you don't have a blog or RSS Feed, skip down to the No Feed section next.)

You'll be creating sections to your home page on google. When you click "Create a Section", this content appears...

Once you've entered your feed url into the empty box and clicked go, google will update the frame on the right with your latest posts or news feed items. You can add as many feed urls as you want.

You should see your content now on your google home page on the right. (in this case the "Home Based" and "Home Finances" links are the two feed urls I added).

At this point you can either:

close the left frame,
add more google suggested items (by clicking on the other links),
move or update the content boxes around in the right-hand frame,
keep reading to learn how to inform google of standard non-feed links.

One suggestion I'll make, and I'm not certain that it makes a lick of a difference, is to edit the settings for each feed you've given google. By default, the google home page will only show your most current 3 listings, but you can change it to display the latest 9. (More is always better in my opinion.) Clicking the edit button beside your feed name will show you the image on the left, change that drop down box to 9 and more of your items will show.

No Feed?

Here's how to add your content to a Google Home Page using standard html, asp or php pages. From the same left frame, once you've signed on and clicked Add Content, you'll want to choose "My Stuff". This opens a sub-menu as shown below...

click "My Stuff" to see...

Click the add> button beside Bookmarks.

You'll add your new website pages or pages you want listed quicker in google here as a bookmark. Again, this works for standard html, asp, php pages. This box shows up in the right hand panel.

Add your url, give it a nice keyword-rich name and click save. Your new pages or new website will now be added to google's home page program. You can see my bookmarks are now added below...

That's it! You're done!

If you have added an RSS Feed or blog you won't need to do anything more (other than visit your google home page every so often to make sure it is updating correctly).

If you've added 'bookmarks' on your google home page to your html, asp or php pages, you might like to visit every time you have a new link you want google to know about.

If you need to ask a question or comment on this technique, click over to the blog post here.