The holy grail of getting your website listed is getting your website spidered.

Once the spiders from Google, MSN and Yahoo spider your site and find unique content, they know that your website bears watching. The trick is to get those spiders to come back often and find new content every time. Here is how I do it.

Create Unique Content

There are two ways to do this. The first is by creating your own completely unique content.

Making your own unique content is easier than it sounds.

Do a little research - check out a forum in your area of interest - see what people are asking questions about. By writing an article that answers a need, you have a ready audience hungry and ready to eat.

Put a bit of your personality into your writing. Be consistent. If you are going for funny - put a little humor in each article. If you are sarcastic, blunt and even a little obnoxious - you will gather a following for your style. So, don't jump from one style to another.

Once your article has 'incubated' on your website for about a week, the search engines will know that you originated this content. Then, when other people publish your content - it is like an homage to your site. Then, put your article on article collection websites. The easiest and most effective way to do this is by using a program to help.

If you are going to be using this marketing method - and I strongly suggest you do - then get the best program for this task by far - ArticleAnnouncer. It is a bit expensive, but highly worthwhile.

The second way to have unique content on your site is by using other people's content. This is extremely easy and effective. Pick an article that will be useful to your readers.

Make it unique content. Here is how I do it. Write an introduction to the article. Comment on what you found useful in the article and how it will help your readers.

At the end of the article add an RSS feed. This is easily done with Carp. Carp is a free program that will allow you to put an RSS feed on your website. The RSS will show up as HTML. That way, the search engine will see it when it spiders your site.

The beauty of this is that the RSS will change, so each time your site is spidered, the search engines see new content. To them, it looks like you have changed your website by hand. Let the Spiders Know!

Once you have your article on your site, let the spiders know that you have new content. The easiest way to do this is by making a Google Sitemap.

There is an extremely easy way to make your website, make a google sitemap and let Google know that you did. That is by using my favorite site building program - XSitePro.

XSitePro will build the sitemap and then take you to Google to let then know that your sitemap has been updated. So, how do the spiders know to come to your site?

There are two ways. One is by following links. By propogating your article. You are assured of getting large numbers of links to your site.

A recent article that I wrote currently has 998,000 references to my site. Not all of these have active links, but a significant number do. Each time the spiders hits one of those links, they have a significant chance of going to your website.

The second way the spiders come to your site is by the Google Sitemap that you built with XSitePro and published. I have found that Google consistently spiders my site within a few minutes of letting them know that there is new content.

Again, here are the steps:

1) Make good content - either original or other useful content that you have enhanced.

2) Publish a Google sitemap.

3) Notify Google that you have updated your sitemap. If you use these steps, you will have great results. PS - I am publishing this site now - I expect the spiders any minute.