Once you have created your niche dating sites and are happy with them you have to tell the search engines to add them to their index. Normally this happens automatically but it can take months. It is also a good idea to add your sites to as many directories as you can. The most important directory is Dmoz and the most important search engine is Google so we will go into those in detail.
Firstly you need to use Google’s webmaster tools to add your site. Log into webmaster tools with the same login you used to set up AdWords (see our previous articles like Choosing a good domain name or Configuring your site for search engines) which is – www.google.com/webmasters/tools
On the home page click on add a site. Add your site as www.yourdomainname.xxx, don’t forget the www before the yourdomainname if you are adding a dating factory site. Once you have clicked the continue button it will ask you to verify your site. Choose alternate methods:
Click on add a Meta tag to your site’s home page. A block with some code will appear copy and paste the verification Meta to your Meta tag section in the head section of the home page of your site. If you are using Dating Factory’s site builder you will see a Meta tag section on the left when you are in the edit section of your site. Don’t forget to publish your site after you have added the verification code
It will take a few hours for the published site to appear live. On Dating Factory admin you will see the waiting for approval and completed remarks next to your site. Once the completed comes up you can go to the next part and click on verify the button in webmaster tools.
To assist Google in indexing your site quickly it makes sense to add a sitemap. Go to dashboard, site configuration – Sitemaps and you will see a button saying submit a sitemap. For Dating Factory niche dating sites we create one together with the sites so you just have to fill in the name after your URL that appears automatically. The name of the sitemap is sitemap.xml; so just type in sitemap.xml in the box that appears when you click on the “submit a sitemap” button.
One further setting that sometimes needs changing is the geographical target. This is only applicable if you are using a .com or .net extension but targeting a specific country and language. If you are using a country extension it is set automatically. To change your geographic target click on settings and choose your target country
No further settings are really necessary but play around with the webmaster tools as they will give you some useful information about your dating site after it has been indexed by Google.
Once you have told Google all about your site you can use some free search engine submission sites to add your website to other search engines. I use www.scrubtheweb.com or www.submitexpress.com, the last one submits to more sites than scrubtheweb so I prefer it, but be warned, don’t use your regular email address for any free submission service as it will get a lot of spam. Set up a specific email account like gmail or gmx (not yahoo) for this spam. You will have a lot of search engines requiring confirmation so you will need one. The process is very simple so just click on the links and follow directions.
Please remember before you submit your site; make your site unique, text, titles and Meta descriptions should be original and relevant to your site, don’t leave the defaults; you will be penalized for duplicate content.
Submitting to Dmoz – http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Relationships/
Select one of their categories first (for example “dating”), then click “suggest URL” from that page. If there is no “suggest URL” button on that page, you need to keep drilling down into sub-categories until the suggest URL link comes up on the top right corner, here is where you would put it in our trustworthy example of vegetarian dating.
http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Lifestyle_Choices/Vegetarianism/Dating_and_Personals/
Enter only your main page, “http://www.yourcompany.com”.
The editors are volunteers and it’s a free service held in very high regard by the search engines. It is quite hard to get into the ODP, you will typically wait several months but if you do get in its worth it.
Here’s a link to the ODP forum, where you can get questions about the Open Directory Project answered by actual ODP editors.
There are tons of other directories where you should submit your sites. Typically sites that ask for reciprocal links are a waste of time so be careful which directories you go into. If you do decide to place a reciprocal link we have created a page called links www.yourdomainname/links where you can paste the code they require. It will take a few hours to be moderated so be patient please. My suggestion is you look at an advice site like http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html. There are many sites like this so better do some research. It does pay off in the end and you will be seen and well regarded by the search engines.
