I thought it would be an easy task getting my website quickly spidered by Google. Use Google's own Add your URL to Google link and just wait a day or so and let Google do their magic. It's not as easy as that. Search engines will quite happily take your URL submission and then sit on it for weeks or months not indexing your site.
I have a number of other websites, all well ranked in Google, but then I was never really trying to be listed. They just happened to be well ranked after a few months. But you don't have a few months to get your business up and listed.
The key for being indexed by Google and other search engine is to have your website linked from other, well established sites. This seems like a catch-22, but the solution is actually rather easy. Social networking sites like digg allow you to post links to any site, and these sites are spidered quickly for new links. The day after adding a link to my site from digg it appeared on Google. Two days after (appropriately) linking from my own well established sites it's the top search result for "DigiLynx".
That's not the end of the story of course. Sites need to use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to let search engines know what they're all about so they can be found on searches that people actually make. Sites like Google Webmaster Tools can help you optimise your site and understand what the spider is seeing.
I'm now aiming for a high page ranking for "php surrey bc". I'll get back to you on how it turns out.
