Iphone

I've submitted the site: Berg-Smith Training: Home Page to Google over four weeks ago. It is clear the site is still not in Google's index. Can anyone suggest ways to improve getting listed? And comment on how long the process generally takes?

Iphone

1) Add better titles to your pages, and put the more significant items first - for example, the home page title is currently: "Berg-Smith Training - Home". Change this to something like: "Motivational Training and Consultancy Berg-Smith"

2) Add more content to your site. Write lots of articles and information around the subject. Become a portal for information on Motivational Interviewing. There is so little content on your site for a search engine to index. If I were you, I would host a full copy of all the papers you have written, and ask institutions who carry them to link by reference to your website for the original work and for further research.

3) Google Site Maps. Available from Google Webmaster Tools at Submit your content to Google

4) Since you have some interesting information that the world would benefit from having in the public domain, put some information into Google Base (Google Base). Google looks favourably on contributors to it's own goals and new ideas.

5) Blog, blog, blog. You seem to have expert views on an emotive subject. Create your own blog and post regularly, making sure the blog references this site. Produce a short (5 minute) motivational video and post it on YouTube and similar sites. Within a short time, this will start to drive traffic to your site.

7) DONT USE SUBMISSION COMPANIES - THIS WILL WORK AGAINST YOU IN THE LONG RUN

It's is very important to be clear about what you are trying to achieve here. Having a high search engine ranking is not a replacement for a well structured advertising and marketing campaign. Don't expect to see a flood of new business opportunities coming in just because your site exists. Some small companies pay thousands for their sites to generate sales, using designers and web experts. Would you trust a search engine if you were searching for "Motivation" and it listed a $200 dollar company listing website above a site hosting a wealth of articles and self-help information you can use for free?

It's also very difficult to get to the top of the list and stay there without good reason. Search engines, including Google are working hard to try to present a searcher with relevant results, so just because you have a new website about Motivational Training does not mean that you should appear in the first 100 pages of results.

You only receive that honour when you publish information that people most likely want to see when they search for something, and then later when hundreds/thousands of people link back to your content to support a discussion on the subject, or when a large institution regularly or permanently cites you in some way.

Finally, given your subject matter, I would prefer your site to be a little more exciting. I want to feel motivated just visiting. Get some motivational colours and images up there, and get a "6 things you can do today" spot on that first landing page.

Approach a designer to help, or approach me and I'll do it for you ;-)