How to Build an Income Generating Blog from Scratch 6

Another good step you need to take in building an income generating blog is to get your blog indexed on major search engines like Google, BING and MSN. Being indexed refers to getting your blog/website into the search engines index and therefore appearing on the search engine results pages (often called SERPs).

 
If you have installed the Google XML sitemap plugin, it will help you create a sitemaps for your blog. Search engines would be able to read your blog through the sitemap. To get this started, you should use the Google Webmasters Tool to verify the ownership of your blog and also submit your blog’s sitemap.

 
Follow these steps to do this:

 
Step 1: Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/ and sign in using your GMail Account or create an account if you don’t have one already.

 
Step 2: Add your blog site by clicking the “Add a site” button. Then type in the domain name you wish to add, and click “Continue”.

 
Step 3: Once added you will need to verify that you own this site. This can be done one of two ways, Meta Tag or Upload a HTML file. The Meta Tag way is, by far the easiest.

 
Step 4: To verify using ‘Meta Tag verification’. This method requires you to add a piece of code to your ‘header.php’ file. Copy the ‘Meta Tag code’ Google has asked you to copy to your blog site.

 
Step 5: In your WordPress dashboard go to “Appearance”, then “Editor” using the menu tabs on the left hand side. Then click on Header (header.php) on the right hand side to open up the header template. Find (CTRL+F) thetag and BELOW it “paste” in the verification Meta tag Google has given you.

 
Step 6: Then scroll down and click on “Update File”

 
Step 7: Go back to the Google Webmasters Tool website and click “Verify” and Google will confirm that you own the site.

 
Step 8: After verifying, Google will display a confirmation page.

 
To add your sitemap to Google

Step 1: From within the Google Webmaster tools website, click on the domain name you have just added and it will open up a Dashboard for your site. On the left hand side menu, click on “Site Configuration” and then “Sitemaps”.

 
Step 2: Click “Submit a Sitemap” and enter the name of your sitemap. It should be sitemap.xml. This will take a few hours for the sitemaps to be analyzed and added. Then you can return here and make sure there are no errors, see how many URLs are being indexed and the time that Google last visited you. Even without the sitemap you will begin to get a list of the top search queries that your site is being found for, incoming links to your site, and the keywords that Google thinks your site is optimized for.

 
By verifying your site and adding your blog’s sitemap, you are telling Google your blog has arrived and it will quickly be indexed.

 
You can do the same also for other search engines. In the next couple of updates, you will get to know how to do this for other search engines. If you can’t wait, you can ask me how to do so in the comment box provided further below. I will reply your comment when I see them.