In order for your blog to come up in search engine results, the search engine must know it exists. Getting discovered, and indexed, by search engines is a critical first step to securing search engine traffic.
Contrary to the beliefs held by some, a search engine cannot simply “find” your blog on its own. It must be led to the blog in some fashion. There are two general ways by which this can happen. You can either tell the search engine about your blog, or you can devise a means by which it will find you. At first glance, it seems like just telling the search engine would be the optimal solution. At one time, this strategy was the easiest way of getting indexed. However, it is no longer the best way to go about things.
You can directly submit your blog to Google, for instance. However, it may take the search engine months to get around to your request. At some point, in frustration, you might be led to submit the information again. There are fairly credible reports that frequent submission of a blog directly to the search engine may actually lead to a penalty. They would prefer to find you all by themselves. I have personally not noticed any problems with direct submission to MSN’s search engine. However, considering the variety of ways by which one can be found without utilizing direct submission, it does not seem necessary to tip off MSN in that manner.
All it requires for a search engine to find you is a link to your blog from another site. Eventually, the search engines will spider that link and discover the blog. You can increase the likelihood of being found quickly by getting multiple links for your site out there and by trying to get links that are likely to be spidered quickly.
Large, popular sites are frequently spidered and a link on a site of this sort can lead to your blog’s inclusion in the search engines relatively quickly. A link from a frequently indexed site could lead to your blog’s discovery within as little as a day.
Things like link trades, sigging, articles and directory listings can do the trick.
Remember, building these links not only encourages necessary indexing, it also serves as a way of improving long-term traffic, as every link can be helpful.
As a blogger, you can make use of them. However, the growth of blogging has led to the creation of blog-only search engines. You would be remiss if you did not submit your blog to these engines.
A simple Google search for the phrase “blog search engine” will yield many additional opportunities to get your blog noticed. Realize that often the terms “blog search engine” and “blog directory” are used almost interchangeably and can overlap a great deal.
There is at least one blog search engines that warrant additional discussion, Technorati. Technorati is a widely used blog search engine. Getting your blog listed at Technorati can increase your traffic more than most other blog search engines. Technorati also supports a tagging function whereby you can “tag” your posts with descriptive keywords making them easier for other Technorati users to find.
There is some debate over the value of Technorati in terms of traffic and with respect to some customer service issues the site apparently experiences. However, serious bloggers would be remiss if they did not take a long look at Technorati and consider making it part of their traffic creation arsenal.
There are other services offering a tagging function that seem to be developing an avid following and may be worth investigation. These include FURL and Del.icio.us.