I had a question the other day from friend of mine, asking me how to get his website listed in Google. In terms of getting it to appear in Google there are two ways that it can be done.

The first is Google adwords, this is when you search for a term in google and matching adverts appear in a list of boxes on the right hand side.

The way this works is that you have to pay google every time someone clicks on your advert. The amount you pay depends on a number of factors, mainly how relevant your advert is to the search terms i.e. how often it is clicked and how much competition you have.

You bid how much you are willing to pay for a click, from a few cent per click upwards and can set a daily limit. For example on my hire a hot tub site I have picked keywords like hottub and jacuzzi Ireland etc. Typically I spend less than €50 per month, but really the sky is the limit depending
on your budget. The other way to get into google is under the main search results (this is known as an Organic listing).

This is much more complicated as it is based on a number of things like how popular your site is (number of other websites which link to it), how much content you have relevant to the search etc. Generally this happens over time so it can take months or years for this to work.

For a new website I would advise you to pay for the ongoing google adwords to get you up and running and then hopefully over time the site would grow in popularity as you add content etc, and then you will get a better organic listing in Google.