There are new bloggers who have a common woe that goes like “Why does Google not index my posts and pages? Does Google dislike me? Am I sandboxed? And so on. Ask yourself for a moment “Why should Google index my posts if I do not care to inform Google about them?” Makes sense?

So, here is how I have setup my blog and suggest you to do too.

First things first: I use WordPress as my blogging platform. This article does not have enough space for me to cover the benefits of WordPress. So, I can’t stress enough. In short, move to WordPress if you can. The rest of the article focuses on it.

Ping List: When you setup your WordPress platform for the first time, login to your admin panel and go to Options. Under Options, go to Writing and at the bottom you will a box with a heading “Update Services”. This is a space where you can add a list of URLs that will ping several social bookmarking and networking sites about your blog post including Google’s own Blog Search Engine. For your convenience, I am adding the URLs below. Just copy and paste them.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

Copy the above list and fill it in the Update Services box. Save them.

Out of the Box SEO: There is a plugin called All in One SEO Plugin. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you can read more and download it here. It is truly an out of Box SEO tool. Once you activate it, the plugin adds 3 SEO form fields in the WRITE section. You can add a keyword rich title, add a good SEO friendly description and add keywords. Even though keywords have become an obsolete practice in gaining search engine results, they are used even today widely. Do not put in for than 5 or 6 keywords. Repeat this process for every post.

Social Submissions: You should make this your second nature. List about 5-6 Social sites depending on your niche. If your blog is about Internet Marketing and the infamous Make Money Niche, sites like Sphinn.com, PlugIM, MarkTD are for you. If your blog is about technology, then go for Digg.com, Propeller, Reddit, etc. Do a bit of research and you will find the site related to your niche. Oh, by the way, Social submission sites are basically user powered sites where you can submit your content and people will read and vote for it or against it. This leads to free traffic for your blog and possibly a line of permanent readership.

This is what I do for every post I pen down. My posts have been indexed by Google in as little as 2 hours. Incidentally, you must have found this post in one of the Social sites. It works, though I can’t tell you for how long. There are rumors about the coming demise of Web 2.0 culture. I believe in it too.

Until then, enjoy!