©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Getting Your Blog On-Line:

Get Your Blog

Noticed By Googlewww.BlogMarketingBasics.com

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©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Introduction• You’ve been putting a lot of work into your blog – now it’s time to start

working on getting it listed in the search engines – primarily Google.

• To do this you’ll need to set-up a Google Analytics account, and a Google

Webmaster account so you can submit a sitemap for your blog and track

the visitors to your blog.

• Both of these steps are very important!

– Submitting a Sitemap helps Google navigate through your blog when it crawls your site,

making sure it doesn’t miss important content for potential readers.

– You need to track where your visitors are coming from, how long they stay on your site,

the pages they visit plus other factors that let you know how well you are serving your

target readers.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE:The data provided in this document is intended to help readers improve their WordPress blogs. By following any or all of the steps in this document the reader takes full responsibility for all results. The reader also understands this information is provided as is and carries no actual or implied warranties of any kind.

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Before You Begin . . . .• If you’ve followed our other tutorials, you now should have –

– Your domain name

– Your hosting company

– WordPress installed

– Your blog theme installed

– Plug-Ins installed

– Widgets set-up

– Your blog header created and installed

– You have made basic design changes – like changing your blog’s color scheme

• Missed some of these tutorials? Click on the links above!

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©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Why Make Your Blog Google-Friendly?No question – you could start a blog and begin building content and leave the finding of your blog to the Google-bots. Eventually they would get to your blog and begin crawling the content. But making you blog “welcoming” to Google helps in a number of areas:

1. Helps Get Your Site Indexed Faster - A good sitemap submitted to Google will help your pages get indexed faster.

2. Helps Get All of Your Sites Content Indexed – Your sitemap also helps you get all important content crawled and indexed.

3. Keeps Out Content You Don’t Want Indexed – You also can make sure content you don’t want indexed stays out of the search engine.

4. Helps You Make Better Use of Your Time – Using Google Analytics can help you identify the best content on your blog – and the best ways that readers find this content.

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©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

A Word On Google and SEO• This tutorial is not intended to be a compressive overview of

search engine optimization (SEO) and Google.

• It is only a BASIC tutorial on the initial steps you must take to

get your blog indexed on Google.

• We also show you how to set-up your blog so you can use

Google Analytics to determine how your blog is doing with

regards to visitors, content, time spent on your blog, etc.

• Look in the Blog Marketing Basics Resources page for details

on tools to help you with your actual SEO efforts.

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©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Make The Process Easier With Plug-Ins

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Tool Where To Get It Overview

Google Analytics http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/googleanalytics/

Makes it easy to include the Google Analytic tracking code on each of your blog pages.

Google XML Sitemap

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Automatically generates sitemaps of your blog and notifies Google when they change.

All-In-One-SEO http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Handles a variety of SEO functions for your blog including titles, descriptions, keywords, and many, many more.

Scribe SEO Use Our Scribe Affiliate Link Integrates keyword research and content optimization for search engines into one great Plug-In. We use it on all of our sites – highly recommended.

WordPress makes things easier by letting you use Plug-Ins. You can make the job of setting-up your blog on Google easier with these Plug-Ins.

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

First – Sign-Up for Google Analytics

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Google offers a great analytics service that is free.

All you’ll need to do is visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ and sign-up for an account.

Once you have your account you can quickly set-up your blog for tracking and for other services provided by Google.

NOTE: If you have a Google Gmail account it is recommended to you set-up a different account for Google Analytics.

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Set-Up Your Blog For Tracking

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Once you’ve logged into your Google Analytics dashboard, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

You’ll see a link to “Add Web Site Profiles.” Click on this link to set-up your blog.

Click “Add a Profile for a new domain” then enter the URL for your blog.

Click the “Finish” button when you are done.

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

After entering your site details you’ll see a page that contains your Google Analytics tracking code.

This code needs to be placed on each page of your blog so that Google can track various statistics for each page.

You’ve got two options –one is to use the Javascript“Paste this code on your site” – or you can use a Google Analytics Plug-In.

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Get Your Google Analytics Tracking Code

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Log into your blog’s Dashboard and go to “Plug-Ins” – click on “Add New”.

Enter “google analytics” in the search box and click “Search Plug-Ins”.

Locate the “Google Analytics” Plug-In and click the “Install” link.

Once the Plug-In is installed, click the “Activate Plug-In” link.

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Install The Google Analytics Plug-In

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Once the Google Analytics Plug-In is installed go to your blog Dashboard and click “Settings” then “Google Analytics”.

Enter your “Web Property ID” in the box as shown –you get this number when you first set-up your blog on Google Analytics (page 9).

Change Asynchronous Tracking to “Yes”.

Click “Save Changes”.

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Enter Your Data Into The Plug-In

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Log back into your Google Analytics account – look for your blog under “Website Profiles”.

Click on “View report.”

On the top right-side of the page that opens click the “Check Status” link.

If you have successfully entered your Tracking Code into the Google Analytics Plug-In you should see the “successfully installed” message.

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Check To Make Sure Your Set-Up Is OK

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

After setting your blog up on Google Analytics you also should set it up on Google Webmaster Tools.

Webmaster Tools provide a number of very useful tools for evaluating and managing your blog.

You also have the ability to submit your blog’s sitemap directly to Google so it can be crawled by the Googlebots.

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Now Set-Up Your Site On Google Webmaster Tools

http://www.google.com/webmaster/tools/

You can log-in with the same Email and Password you used for Google Analytics

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Log into Google webmaster tools and enter your blog under “Add a site . . .” then click “Continue”.

Use one of two options to verify that you own the blog site –

1. Link the webmaster tools to your Google Analytics account (easiest).

2. Download and HTML file and then upload to your blog.

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Enter Your Blog and Verify Ownership

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Download the “verify ownership” HTML file from the Google webmaster tools site.

Use and FTP program like FileZilla to upload the HTML file to your blog’s root directory.(http://filezilla-project.org/)

Once you’ve uploaded the HTML file go back to Google webmaster tools and click the “Verify” button.

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Upload HTML File To Your Blog

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

After clicking the “Verify” button you should immediately go to the new Google webmaster tools Dashboard for your blog.

If there is a problem you will get error messages on the “Verify ownership” page – these errors must be corrected in order to continue.

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Make Sure Webmaster Tools Is Set-Up Properly

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Now that your blog is set-up on Google webmaster tools you can add a sitemap.

Log into your blog and go to the Plug-Ins page, click the “Add New” button.

Enter “Google Sitemap” in the search box then click “Search Plugins”.

Locate Google XML Sitemaps plug in and click the “Install” link. Once the Plug-In is installed click the “Activate Plugin” link.

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Install Google Sitemap Plug-In

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Once the Google Sitemap Plug-In is installed, go to your blog’s Dashboard and click Settings > XML Sitemap.

The XML Sitemap Generator settings page will open – to generate your first sitemap locate and click on the “Click here” link.

If successful, you’ll see the results of your sitemap build on the settings page.

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Build You Blog Sitemap

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

Look on the Google XML Sitemap settings page for the name of your sitemap (probably “sitemap.xml”).

Go back to your Google webmaster tools Dashboard and click on “Site configuration > Sitemaps”.

Click on the “Submit a Sitemap” button.

Enter the name of your sitemap and click the “Submit Sitemap” button.

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Submit Your Sitemap To Google

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC

After submitting your blog’s sitemap you should see a screen similar to the one on the top right.

Since this is the first time you’ve submitted the sitemap you’ll see a “clock” image under “Status”.

The screen on the bottom right shows the Sitemap page the day after submission.

This screen shows the details on submission, status, and URLs submitted and indexed.

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Make Sure Your Sitemap Submitted Correctly

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC 21

A few final things to keep in-mind –

1. If you’ve just started your blog getting the pages on your blog indexed by

Google will take time. You can help move things along by getting high-

quality links to your blog – but don’t get frustrated if your Sitemap stats

show 25 URLs downloaded and 0 URLs indexed. Google won’t be rushed.

2. It will take time – as well – for any meaningful data to be provided by

Google Analytics. This tool is great for tracking a number of important

metrics for your site – but the driver of these metrics is traffic. If you

don’t yet have traffic then the data is not going to be that useful.

However – make sure you understand these measures so you can analyze

those thousands of unique visits you get to your site each day when

things really take off!

Great! Now Your Blog Is Ready To Be Noticed By Google!

©Copyright 2011 by Blog Marketing Basics LLC 22

If you have a need for the following resources we

appreciate you using our affiliate links!

We Appreciate Your Support!

Service Affiliate Link Description

Domain Names NameCheap We manage most of our domain names with NameCheap

Web Hosting HostGator One click WordPress installs, great prices and support for web hosting

Premium WordPress Themes

StudioPress We use the Genesis Framework and Prose Child Theme from Studio Press for most of our blogs

Analytics Market Samurai Market Samurai delivers great features at a great price – use it to give your blog a leg-up on the competition.

Blog Optimization Scribe We use the Scribe SEO Plug-In on all of our blogs –research and optimization together and easy to use