Google isn't the only search engine on the planet. I guess you've probably heard of Yahoo! and Microsoft? They have their own search engines and you can also give them a helping hand to discover that your new blog or website exists.

In the case of Yahoo I went to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. If you're not already a Yahoo member you'll have to sign up first. With that done the procedure is similar to Google. I typed in the full URL of this blog (http://wwwgurus.blogspot.com) and clicked the "Add My Site" button. I then clicked the "Authenticate" button and scrolled to the bottom of the page to find the verification meta tag. Copy it, then paste it into the blogger template in the same way as for Google. I had a problem when I tried to save the updated template. Blogger complained that "Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed". Compared to the Google meta tag, it looked like Yahoo had forgotten to put in a "/" just before the last ">". I typed that in and saved the template again. This time Blogger was happy. I returned to Yahoo and clicked the "Ready to Authenticate" button. Yahoo was happy too and informed me that "Your site is pending authentication". Finally I let Yahoo know about the site feed. I clicked on the "Manage" button next to the blog URL, typed "feeds/posts/full" into the empty box and clicked the "Add Feed" button.

Microsoft's search engine is catchily entitled "Live Search". In a post on their blog Microsoft say "we aren't ready to start consuming sitemaps quite yet". At least this makes the task a bit quicker than for Google and Yahoo. To give Live Search a bit of a helping hand indexing us I went to http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx. First I had to fill in the captcha box to prove that I'm not a computer, then I typed the blog URL into the box at the bottom and clicked the "Submit" button. Job done!

I did all this three days ago, and it seems to have had some effect. We are now ranked 28 on Live Search for the keyphrase "web gurus". We are even ranked 873 for "Internet gurus". Google now have us ranked 258 for "adsense gurus" too.

I have now got our website at http://www-gurus.com up and running (as you can now see!). At the moment it consists of just a home page and a single blog post (Not any more - Ed), which for some strange reason looks remarkably similar to one of the posts on our original Blogger blog!

Technorati has found this new blog too. Since the new site has a link to the Blogger version we now have a Technorati authority rating of 1.

Another search of Google today reveals we are now number 1 for "wwwgurus" (out of 33). It's always nice to be top of Google for your own name, at the very least. We have also gone from nowhere to number 47 (out of around 2,530,000) on a search for the keyphrase "web gurus".

Now it's safe to say that there aren't too many people on the planet searching for "web gurus", but it does at least give an idea of what's possible if you target long tail keywords. There are however enough people searching for a "web guru" for the Google AdWords keyword tool to reveal that there are at least a few advertisers targeting that phrase, and to give those advertisers traffic estimates.

(Note that the link above is to the public version of the Google keyword tool.  You need to open an AdWords account before you can see all the advertiser information)

I was up early this morning. The smoke alarm kept beeping to tell me the battery is going flat. It still beeped even when I took the battery out! I pressed the test button and eventually it stopped A little while later the downstairs alarm did exactly the same thing

Still without my first coffee of the day I fired up my laptop and did another search on Google for wwwgurus. We're still at number 6, but at number 9 was our entry on Technorati. Google's cached page shows that when Google crawled Technorati on 6 Aug 2007 at 10:05:09 GMT we were top of their list of new posts about internet marketing! I clicked the link and then Technorati invited me to sign up and claim my blog, which I duly did. To prove I own the blog I had to make a new post on the blog, including a special link to my shiny new Technorati Profile. Here it is!

Technorati also asked me if I'd like to add a button to my blog that people could click on to show their approval. I went into the blogger dashboard and added an HTML/Javascript page element, then copied and pasted the HTML code Technorati supplied into it. You can now see the nice green button over on the top right, just above the AdSense block.

I logged into Google webmaster tools this morning and my shiny new blog is now verified. Google is at last now satisfied that I am the owner of a blog I created using the same email address that I had already used to login to Google webmaster central. Hooray! Isn't modern technology wonderful?

However the blog has still not yet been crawled. To help Google in this task I added a sitemap at this point. With a Blogger blog you can't generate a normal sitemap. Instead I clicked the "Add" button in the "Sitemap" column in the Webmaster tools dashboard, and entered the blog's atom feed URL (http://wwwgurus.blogspot.com/atom.xml in this case). Given the apparent inability of Google's systems to talk to each other I'm beginning to wonder whether I should manually add the URL to Google's queue as a belt and braces measure. For now let's forget about that and wait and see what happens.

There is now a single, hopefully relevant, AdSense advertisement placed over on the top right of the page. The one showing at the moment is about an affiliate website. I guess that counts as relevant.

Then I went over to http://www.google.com/adsense and logged into my new AdSense account for the first time. It says in a large font at the top:

Today's Earnings: US$0.00

In smaller print next to that it says "Your payments are currently on hold. Action is required to release payment." Obviously we are currently nowhere near Google's $100 payment threshold, so we'll come back to sort that out later. It does seem like we're in desperate need of some traffic though.

Having made my first post I added an AdSense page element to the Blogger blog template. This prompted Google to ask me to sign up for AdSense, which of course I proceeded to do. I received an email from them informing me that "Your application has now been submitted for review and we will follow up with you by email in 1-2 days". A couple of hours later I received an email congratulating me on the fact that my AdSense application had been approved, but warning that "if Google has not yet crawled your site, you may not notice relevant ads for up to 48 hours". I headed over to Google webmaster tools and added the new blog URL (http://wwwgurus.blogspot.com) to my list of web sites. Sure enough the blog has not yet been crawled by Google. I figured Google's computers must be smart enough to realize that I own the blog, but apparently not. They asked me to add a meta tag to the blog header to prove it! I went back to the blog template to edit the HTML. Google thoughtfully asked me if I wanted to back up the existing template, and I gratefully accepted their generous offer. I added the Google verification meta tag just underneath the line that starts "<head>" near the beginning of the template and saved the new version. I then rushed back to Google webmaster tools and clicked the "Verify" button. Horror of horrors! Google tells me that verification is pending, "Our system has experienced a temporary problem."

The first step on the long road to becoming an internet guru is to start a blog.  If you have access to some sort of internet connection then those nice guys at Google will let you have an email address at zero cost.  They'll even sweeten the deal with a website at zero cost too.  That seems like a pretty good place to start so lets head on over to Blogger and begin. (By the way, Blogger is certainly a good place to start, but not necessarily to continue - More on this topic later)

The first thing you'll need is a Google account.  If you haven't got one yet you can sign up here as long as you already have an email address.  If you haven't even got an email address yet you can get both at the same time by signing up here instead. If you're setting this up on a public computer, in an internet cafe or library for example, remember to uncheck the "Remember me on this computer" box.

Having done that go back to Blogger and type in the email address and password that Google now knows about and click the "Sign In" button.   You'll be shown the Blogger sign up page.  Type in the name you wish to appear on all of your blog posts.  It could be your real name, a nickname or a nom de plume.  Check the box to say you've read the terms and conditions and then click the "Continue" button.  (If you're of a nervous disposition, or even merely curious, you may wish to read the Google terms and conditions carefully before doing this)

You'll now find yourself in your shiny new Blogger dashboard.  It will tell you "You are not a member of any blogs", as though you didn't know that already!  Click the big "CREATE YOUR BLOG NOW" button.  Type in your blog title (I chose "World Wide Web Gurus") and your blog address (I chose "wwwgurus").  If you have read anything about search engine optimization you may wish to work your core keywords into the blog URL and title at this point.  However, as you will see, we don't intend staying on Blogger forever, so there's really no need to worry about all that just yet.  Simply click the "Continue" button.  If Blogger complains that "Sorry, this blog address is not available" keep trying other addresses until it lets you continue.  Like I said, don't be too concerned if you can't get just the one you want.

Now choose a template you like the look of.  The default Minima is nice and clean and as good a place as any to start.  Click "Continue" for the last time.  Blogger will inform you that "Your blog has been created!"  Joyfully click the "Start Posting" button.

Type in your very first message to the world, not forgetting the title, and click the "Publish Post" button. (I typed in something remarkably similar to the first post on this blog.  Well, actually it was identical.  Cut and paste is an essential skill to learn if you want to be an internet marketer!)  Blogger will report that "Your blog post published successfully!"  Click the big "View Blog" link and you can at long last admire the fruits of your labour.

Congratulate yourself and go and put your feet up. Make yourself a nice hot cup of tea, or something stronger if you prefer.  I had a large glass of the best Somerset cider.