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So now you have your business website. OK, that’s good. Now what? Wait for someone to fill in their contact info and then click submit on the contact us form? Wait until somebody calls the phone number listed on the website? Wait for someone to click the email link? Well, you could, but why not submit your website to Google to expedite the inclusion of your website in the great and mighty Google database, and by extension, in the Google search results.

The process of Submitting your website to Google is quite simple.

1. Navigate to the Add your URL to Google
2. Enter website address in the URL input field
3. Enter comments in the comments input field
4. Enter the optional characters in the image which is a mechanism used by Google to distinguish between sites submitted to Google and by individuals and those submitted to Google automatically through software. Note that this input field is optional
5. click the submit button

Only the top-level page of your website needs be submitted to Google and then the Google web crawler will discover linked pages that collectively comprise your website. According to Google, the comments entered in the add your URL to Google form do not affect how your page is indexed or used by Google once submitted.

If you are a procrastinator, fear not as new domains, once registered, generate what is called whois records that include the domain name and name servers which get communicated to Google who adds the new domain information to the queue of web address to crawl. That is not to say that submitting your URL won’t expedite the process getting your website listed on Google faster to bring more natural search traffic sooner.

Google does have the following disclaimer listed on the Add your URL to Google page: “We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.” In my experience, it is rare that Google will exclude any unique and useful content from its database but like most things in life beyond death and taxes, nothing is guaranteed.

As the next step in managing your website positioning within Google, navigate to the Google Webmaster Central and login to learn more about tools and techniques to enhance your search positioning and Google search referral traffic.

While performing a search for “Interent Marketing Services” on Google, in addition to the top sites that have dominated that keyphrase sinse eBiz ROI began tracking last year, a funny thing happened. On the first page of the search results were labeled Latest Results for Internet Marketing Services which included Twitter Tweets containing the words Internet, Marketing and Service, broad matched, integrated into the first page of the Google search results.

Google search results with tweets integrated into first page results

I have heard about this coming and maybe this is old news, but this is the first time that I have noticed Twitter tweets integrated into page one search resutls for Google searches. This could certain alter the role that Twitter plays in search engine marketing and SEO. Since terms like interenet marketing services may not lend themselves well to video and image references being included in blended search results, maybe integration of tweets with those keywords in the tweet could provide another dimension of relevancy and timely information. This new approach provides savvy Internet marketers who use Twitter to promote their business, to get on the first page of Google, much like the opportunity that integration of the Google 7-pack does with the integration of local search results triggered on search of keywords likely to have location based intent.

Oddly enough, Google searches in the past would include Google 7-pack local search results, but in the instance of search results for Internet Mareking Services captured by the image above, it appears not to be the case as no local search results were included in the results. Does this meant that Google is mixxing things up in this regard, making sure to provide only one back door at a time (i.e. Twitter Tweet integration vs. Google 7-Pack) to the search results at time so as not to overly disrupt the delicate balance of the PPC-SEO-ecosystem too much at one time? Only time will tell.

Readers are invited to comment on whether this is old news or whether this is a new opportunity and incentive for search mrketers to step up their investment in Twitter to promote their businesses and their clients.

SEO is Hard Work

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is hard but rewarding work. SEO done right at least. Done right means employing only ethical SEO tactics, often referred to as whitehat SEO tactics. While it’s possible to achieve short-terms results using unethical SEO tactics, often referred to as blackhat SEO tactics to deceive search engines, it’s a risky approach.

How does one know if an SEO tactic is blackhat? All unethical SEO tactics are designed to deceive search engines into rating content relevancy to particular keywords higher than it really is. For instance, a blackhat seo tactic commonly used more than a decade ago when search engines were a relatvely new concept, was filling a page with repeating keywords in a font that was the same as the background color of the page, so not viewable by readers. While these blackhat SEO tactics, at the time, were effective in achieving short-term traffic results, once detected and labeled by the search engines as SPAM, the offending sites optimized with blackhat SEO tactics were in some cases temporarily blacklisted by the search engines, some banned from search results altogether.

The contemporary search engines have become more sophisticated in detecting blackhat SEO tactics, driven by maintaining relevant search results for users. To search engines, ensuring website content relevancy to search terms is their Holy Grail for maintaining and growing their search market share. Naturally, users will gravitate to search engines that deliver most relevant search results for the least amount of effort on their part. Wading through SPAM will drive search engine users to find alternative search engines with more relevant results. To search engines, loss of users means loss of search market share, resulting in lost advertising revenue. You can understand why search engines are motivated to find and punish websites that use blackhat SEO tactics.

Implementing whitehat SEO tactics is hard work which involves careful keyword research, website analysis, competitor analysis, comparison of website content to industry benchmarks, obtaining quality links from related websites. If it sounds like ethical SEO is a lot of work, it is. This is not to say that the amount of effort to implement whitehat SEO tactics is too high relative to the reward, but that caution should be used when considering short-cuts or SEO practitioners that employ them. Whitehat SEO tactics, when applied correctly, can deliver a steady stream of qualified traffic to a website for an ongoing period of time without incurring additional cost for each visitor.

In summary, when evaluating SEO practitioners, whether internal or outsourced, understand enough to ensure that Blackhat SEO tactics are not used as a shortcut to results. Evaluate tactics on the basis of whether they are designed in some way to deceive the search engines. When in doubt, great sources of additional information include the Google Webmaster Guidelines and the industry de facto SEO Code of Ethics offered to the industry and available in 19 languages.