If you own a website or a blog, or both, you’d probably want Google to know you exist. I mean, Google knew YouTube existed and copped it for a whopping $1.6 billion dollars. I’m sure you could do with, half of that kinda cash lying around somewhere. So to get there, you need to get your site or blog indexed in Google as a starting point.

Note: I know many of you still have problems getting indexed in Google for your site or blog. I will cover that topic in future.

How To Check If Google Has Indexed My Site

• Fire up your browser and go to Google. Now, type in the url of your site or blog into Google’s search box either like http://yoursite.com/ or http://www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com. Each variation of the url might bring up different results so try all of those. If you get a result, you’re IN! You’re now in Google’s database where someone who happens to search for your name or the name of your site, will find it in Google. For this example, I’ll be using General Motors’ blog (bet ya didn’t know General Motors’ had a blog, did ya?). Why General Motors as an example? I just like the color of its site.

• Alternatively, you could type in site:http://www.yoursite.com or site:yoursite.com to see if it’s indexed. This special syntax tells you how many of your pages Google has already indexed and are showing up in its database. Don’t fret if yours isn’t indexed yet. If your site is relatively new, it’s quite probable that could be the reason why. 
• Now, if your site is indexed, what you’d probably like to do next is find out, how much Google really knows about it. So, type in info:http://www.yoursite.com or, info: followed by any of the other URL variations I mentioned above. That should bring up a page which looks something like this:

• Google shows a few clickable links which you can click to get more information about your site. You will see a link to Google’s cache of your URL. A cache is a copy of the page that Google indexed. You can click on ‘link to‘ to see who’s linking to your site and so on (a tool that I would recommend you use to find out who’s linking to your site is MarketLeap’s Link Popularity Check. It’s free to use and very useful indeed).
• Let’s just try clicking on Google’s cache and see what pops up.

What you’ll see is a bit of information that Google tells you about when it last indexed your site and at what time.

Tip: Those ‘in the know’ about search engine optimization takes advantage of Google’s cache feature to have it spider their sites regularly. Here’s how you can do the same:

If you have a whole lot of pages on your site, Google’s bots will never usually index all of it in one go. It will spider your site a bit at a time and return to index some more.

What you do is check Google’s cache a few times over a few days to see how often Google’s bots ‘pays homage’ to your site. Once you get an idea of its frequency, update your content before Google’s bots returns. Do this regularly enough, and Google’s bots will understand that your site is one that is regularly updated. What happens then is the bots will keep a regular schedule of visiting your site.

Taking advantage of this fact, place a link in your site or blog (now knowing fully well when Google is coming over for a visit), that points to your own product page, which could be a direct response web site or an order page (these sites hardly rank well in Google because of its lack of content). This sends a surge of traffic from your blog (which is now regularly visited by Google) to your product’s website (hardly visited by Google). That’s traffic you never had to pay for.

There’s a lot to search engine optimization than meets the eye, but it is vital to anyone doing business online to understand it. I’ll be covering more on this topic along the way and pointing you to resources that will keep you well up-to-date on how to keep you sites highly ranked and bringing in steady traffic.