Stay organized with collections
Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
August 02, 2006
I just got back from BlogHer,
a conference primarily for women about the technical and community aspects of blogging. As a woman
who blogs, I had a wonderful time. As a woman who blogs about topics of interest to site owners,
I gained some new perspectives.
These bloggers tend to already put into practice a lot of the things we tell site owners who ask
how to get more of their context indexed and make it easier to find through Google searches. As
group, they:
Provide unique perspectives and content on topics
Think about their visitors, making sure the sites meet their visitors' needs
Give visitors reasons to come back, and other sites reasons to link to them (they update content
regularly, and most offer in-depth information, such as tutorials, reviews, or in-depth
explanations).
The panelists understood visitor awareness. They told the crowd to look closely at their sites to
determine how unique they were from other sites out there. They talked about getting visitors to
care. This thoughtfulness leads to great sites, which in turn can lead to great search results.
Given all of the dedication these bloggers put into their sites, they are of course interested in
attracting visitors. Some want the joy of sharing; others are interested in making money from
their writing. Here are a few tips to help make your site easier to find, whatever your
motivation:
High-quality links
from other sites help bring visitors to your site and can help your site get indexed and
well-ranked in Google. The number one question asked at this conference was "What is your site?"
People want to know so they can go read it, and if they like it, link to it. But the number one
answer to this question was the name of the site, not the URL. Bloggers had
T-shirts of their sites available, and many of those didn't have URLs. Tell people your URL so
they can find you, read you, and link to you!
Make sure Google can crawl your site. We use an automated system (called "Googlebot") to visit
pages on the web, determine their contents, and index them. Sometimes, Googlebot isn't able to
view pages of a site, and therefore can't index those pages. There are two primary things you
can do to check your site.
Read our webmaster guidelines to learn about how we
crawl sites and what can make that easier.
Sign up for a
Google Sitemaps account
to see a list of errors we encountered when we tried to crawl your site. This way you can
find out if we can't reach your site, and why. Once you sign up for a Google Sitemaps
account and add your site URL, you need to
verify site ownership
before you can see diagnostic information. To do this, simply click the Verify link and
follow the steps outlined on the Verify page.
You can verify site ownership in one of two ways:
Upload an HTML file with a specific name to your site
Once you verify site ownership, you can see other details about your site in addition to
errors. For instance, you can see what visitors are searching for when they click in the
Google search results. You can see this for visitors searching our
web index as well as
blogsearch.
You can also see what searches visitors do to find your
images.
You can also see what words other sites use to link to you (which helps explain why your site
might show up for searches that you think are unrelated to your site).
Submit an RSS feed
of your site to quickly tell us about all of your pages, so we know to crawl and index them.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eBloggers often inherently follow SEO best practices by creating unique content, focusing on visitor needs, and regularly updating their sites.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eSharing your site's URL is crucial for attracting visitors and encouraging backlinks, leading to better search engine indexing and ranking.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eUtilizing Google's webmaster tools, such as Sitemaps and Search Console, allows you to identify crawl errors and gain insights into visitor search behavior.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eVerifying site ownership in Google Search Console grants access to valuable data and diagnostic information, enhancing your understanding of site performance.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eSubmitting an RSS feed helps Google efficiently discover and index all pages on your site, ensuring they are included in search results.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Bloggers at BlogHer exhibit practices that enhance site visibility. Key actions include providing unique content, understanding visitor needs, and regularly updating their sites. To improve search visibility, the document advises sharing the site's URL, not just its name, and ensuring Google can crawl the site using webmaster guidelines or Google Sitemaps. Site verification, through HTML file upload or meta tag addition, reveals visitor search behavior and linking words. Submitting an RSS feed helps quickly inform search engines of site pages.\n"],null,["# Back from BlogHer\n\nAugust 02, 2006\n\n\nI just got back from [BlogHer](https://blogher.org/),\na conference primarily for women about the technical and community aspects of blogging. As a woman\nwho blogs, I had a wonderful time. As a woman who blogs about topics of interest to site owners,\nI gained some new perspectives.\n\n\nThese bloggers tend to already put into practice a lot of the things we tell site owners who ask\nhow to get more of their context indexed and make it easier to find through Google searches. As\ngroup, they:\n\n- Provide unique perspectives and content on topics\n- Think about their visitors, making sure the sites meet their visitors' needs\n- Give visitors reasons to come back, and other sites reasons to link to them (they update content regularly, and most offer in-depth information, such as tutorials, reviews, or in-depth explanations).\n\n\nThe panelists understood visitor awareness. They told the crowd to look closely at their sites to\ndetermine how unique they were from other sites out there. They talked about getting visitors to\ncare. This thoughtfulness leads to great sites, which in turn can lead to great search results.\n\n\nGiven all of the dedication these bloggers put into their sites, they are of course interested in\nattracting visitors. Some want the joy of sharing; others are interested in making money from\ntheir writing. Here are a few tips to help make your site easier to find, whatever your\nmotivation:\n\n1. [High-quality links](/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide) from other sites help bring visitors to your site and can help your site get indexed and well-ranked in Google. The number one question asked at this conference was \"What is your site?\" People want to know so they can go read it, and if they like it, link to it. But the number one answer to this question was the **name**of the site, not the URL. Bloggers had T-shirts of their sites available, and many of those didn't have URLs. Tell people your URL so they can find you, read you, and link to you!\n2. Make sure Google can crawl your site. We use an automated system (called \"Googlebot\") to visit pages on the web, determine their contents, and index them. Sometimes, Googlebot isn't able to view pages of a site, and therefore can't index those pages. There are two primary things you can do to check your site.\n 1. Read our [webmaster guidelines](/search/docs/essentials) to learn about how we crawl sites and what can make that easier.\n 2. Sign up for a [Google Sitemaps account](https://search.google.com/search-console) to see a list of errors we encountered when we tried to crawl your site. This way you can find out if we can't reach your site, and why. Once you sign up for a Google Sitemaps account and add your site URL, you need to [verify site ownership](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592) before you can see diagnostic information. To do this, simply click the Verify link and follow the steps outlined on the Verify page.\n3. You can verify site ownership in one of two ways:\n\n - Upload an HTML file with a specific name to your site\n - [Add a `\u003cmeta\u003e` tag](/search/blog/2006/05/more-about-meta-tag-verification) to your site's home page\n\n\n Once you verify site ownership, you can see other details about your site in addition to\n errors. For instance, you can see what visitors are searching for when they click in the\n Google search results. You can see this for visitors searching our\n [web index](https://www.google.com/) as well as\n [blogsearch](https://blogsearch.google.com/).\n You can also see what searches visitors do to find your\n [images](https://www.google.com/imghp?tab=wi&q=).\n\n\n You can also see what words other sites use to link to you (which helps explain why your site\n might show up for searches that you think are unrelated to your site).\n4. [Submit an RSS feed](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview) of your site to quickly tell us about all of your pages, so we know to crawl and index them.\n\nPosted by [Vanessa Fox](https://www.vanessafox.com/)"]]
