Abandoned By Google! Googlebot, Wherefore Art Thou Googlebot?
|
|
As a search engine optimization specialist I often optimizeexisting web pages for small business clients, upload them tothe site and see pages re-indexed by Google within a week.This only happens with existing business sites that have beenonline for a few years. Google seems to be updating theirindex as often as every other week at this point and olderestablished sites that are already indexed seem to be re-crawled on that twice a month schedule on a fairly routinebasis.
Two clients that hired me for recent work saw their rankingsshoot to the top for a newly targeted search phrase in aweekend when I did optimization on a Thursday and they wereranked instantly by Saturday. Now keep in mind that thisdoesn't happen for everyone, only those that have been onlinefor some period and already have significant content thatsimply needs tweaking and proper title and metatag informationadded. They usually have relatively good existing PageRank anddo well for other RELEVANT search phrases already. I offer thatwarning only to avoid instilling false hopes in anyone hopingto achieve the same instant ranking boost overnight.
Those clients that do succeed in this way are often thrilledwith the results accomplished in such short order. I'd loveto be able to offer that type of ranking boosts to everyone,but some are more equal than others when it comes to easy,inexpensive SEO tune-ups that rev up your rankings overnight.Your mileage may vary.
WHY DO NEW SITES SUFFER?
What is going on with newer sites that don't get crawled formonths? I've got a client, a newer attorney directory thatoffers tons of great information in the form of articles onspecific areas of law, links to incredibly valuable andrelevant legal sites and over 600,000 attorneys listed bypractice area and state. Yet the site has not been re-crawledby Google for over 3 months! Now this would not be such a bigissue for many sites, but this site is relatively new and we'veoptimized all the titles, tags & page text, created a completesite map and placed links to all these resources on the frontpage.
I know that the site is not being crawled because Google'scached copy of the front page shows it before we did thework four months ago, without the new links and withouttitle tags. We've submitted the site by hand, (manually)once a month for three months via the Google Add URL page.http://www.google.com/addurl.html When the hand submissionfailed to get it re-indexed for four months, we submittedthe sitemap page, which has not been crawled at all. Googleshows only ONE page on this site, when in fact it hasthousands of pages, a sitemap and dozens static pages!
Part of the problem is that this site must be dynamic, sincea database of over 632,000 attorneys must be accessed,retrieved and served for any of those law firms searched forto be returned to the site visitor. Google warns owners ofdynamic sites that Googlebot may not crawl dynamicallygenerated pages with "?"" question marks in the URL. This isto avoid crashing the server with too many concurrent pagerequests from Google's spider.http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1
The solution to this dynamic URL problem has been discussedwidely in search engine forums and solutions have been bandiedabout including software provided by SEO's, URL re-writetechniques for dynamic pages on APACHE servershttp://www.alistapart.com/articles/urls/ and PHP pageshttp://www.stargeek.com/php-seo.php to generate search enginefriendly URL's. Others recommend simply adding static HTMLsitemap pages as alternatives for the search engine spiders.In this instance the client's developer simply said "Ican'tdo that (PHP solution) on this server". So we resorted toputting up the static HTML sitemap pages with hard-coded
URLS to the main 54 pages of the site athttp://lawfirm411.com/Law-Firm-411-sitemap.html This shouldget at least those fifty pages crawled by Googlebot, butGoogles' spider appears not to be crawling this site at all.How do we know this? See for yourself by using the followingquery in the search box at Google: allinurl:www.lawfirm411.comwhere the result page shows ONE page in the results. If youtry that query on your own site (replace your own domain namefor lawfirm411.com), you'll see the results lists ALL yourpages.
The site home page was crawled by Google four months ago, whenthey took their "Cached Snapshot" of the page. You can seethis by visiting the Google cached page here:http://66.102.7.104/search?sourceid=navclient&;ie=UTF-8&q=cache:www.lawfirm411.comwhere the date of this snapshot is "Apr 20, 2004 07:42:19 GMT"and they haven't been back since. The page in that snapshothas none of the newly added links, an outdated title tag, andold content.
This problem is not unique to this site. One client we workedwith two years ago had a dynamically generated, framed site!Those two site structures have always given search enginestrouble. Their site was not crawled at all and only the frontpage showed up. Our solution was to create a second domain(owned by the client), which had static HTML pages thatprecisely mirrored the content of the client's framed,dynamically generated site. Guess what happened afterGooglebot crawled the static site? Google indexed the framedsite in full and then banned the static site from the index!Not an approach we advocate, but the one that worked for thisclient.
We're still searching for ways to get Googlebot back toLawFirm411.com before creating that new static site, butdecided to share this odd experience with the SEO communitybefore going to any extremes. Google provides over 70% ofmost search engine referred traffic to ALL of our clientsand we realized we can't site idly by and see a major clientlanguish because Googlebot didn't like what it found at theclient site on the first visit four months ago.This issue dogs newer sites in other places as well. The OpenDirectory Project has also become notoriously slow in addingnew sites to the directory and in this case, has not pickedup this site even after 6 regular monthly submissions. Theweb playing field may have begun tilting toward older,established sites and away from new ones.
------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Banks Valentine is the SEO for http://www.lawfirm411.com
Contact him at http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm
Improve Your Small Business Online at our Ecommerce Tutorial
http://website101.com/Free-Tutorials/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterHas Google Lost The Plot?
With the help of MSN, recently I've been reminiscing about the Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and bada-bing, bada-boom, it'd be #1 on Google? Remember the old days, pre-Florida, pre-sandbox? The days when we, as search engine optimization specialists, didn't feel like a private schoolgirl smoking in the bathroom? When we didn't feel like the iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Ye...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Understanding Google - What You Need To Know To Conquer This Search Engine Giant
Use a keyword density of about 1 to 2%. Use to be that you could rank high with 5% to 15%, but not any more. Google will call that "over optimizing" and penalize you.Don't use more than 83 characters (including spaces) in your meta title tag. That usually comes out to about 10 to 15 words. If you have more characters, there is no penality it's just that Google won't count them as being in your title tag.Your important keywords absolutely MUST be in your title. (That is if you want them to achieve any importance at all.)Google doesn't use the description tag for a description like some search engines do, but take the time to write a good description of your site anyway. Google does index the words in the description tag just like they were words in the text. Be sure to use keywords in your descri...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Does Google Hire Mad Scientists?
Online search giant, Google, often tests the waters for newservices by rolling out a "beta" (first) version of an ideato gauge public reaction.By employing this strategy, it...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
No Cost Search Engine Marketing
As a matter of fact, I recommend NOT wasting money on pay inclusion in most cases because it doesn't offer enough of an advantage (and many times the fees give you absolutely no advantage - the only exception are the few sites that guarantee placement within a specific timeline). Focus your online marketing and gain positive and targeted traffic without paying out for "expedited listings" or "submission software."Submission software can appear to save time and effort, but in all reality, it doesn't...I suggest to clients that they don't waste their time with submission software. No matter how good it sounds, honestly, the best way to attain and maintain strong search engine rankings is wit...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Great Site Ranking In Google The Secrets Out
How many years did you register your domain name for?If it was only one then Google could hold that against you.Why?Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.This is just one of the unusual factors possibly considered by Google when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never even have guessed at in some cases.How do I know this...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Seos Relationship With Website Architecture
SEO's Relationship With Website ArchitectureSearch engine optimization for today's search engine robots requires that sites be well-designed and easy-to-navigate. To a great degree, organic search engine optimization is simply an extension of best practices in web page design. SEO's relationship with web design is a natural one. By making sites simple and easily accessible, you are providing the easiest path for the search engine robots to index your site, at the same time that you are creating the optimum experience for your human visitors.This approach ties well into the notion of long-term search engine mark...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Drive More Traffic To Your Website With Your Web Page Title!
One of the most overlooked, but important components, on your web page is the Meta title. The Me...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
How To Manage Seo
Whether you launch a search engine optimization program in-house or outsource the program, you should keep the following training opportunities and skill sets in mind:? Advanced SEO techniques, including pa...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
7 Free Search Engine Resources You Should Be Using Now
Ask any business person who's website is at the top of the search engines if his/her site is making money, and the answer is almost always "yes".An example is Glenn Canady, the author of "Gorilla Marketing" who employed only one of these strategies, and it made him over $1 million dollars.The fact is, search engines can get you an enor...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Do The Robot!
Everyone should realize that the search engines (sponsored ads aside)are not tools for advertisement, they are meant to be tools for everday web users. Users who search the web are looking for information, thats it. They may want information on how to buy something, or they may simply want to what the weather will be later that day, but the fact is they want information, and search engines are out there to help them find the information!Search Engines (SE's) work as follows:1. They index sites. They do this by following the "web" (after all, the internet is one big web). While indexing one page, they find a link to your new website, and follow that link to your site. Because your site is new, they index you. While not that simple, that is the basic idea.2. They return to index more o...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
The 7 Points Of Do-it-yourself Seo
Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees the experts charge, p...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
Seo - Are You Making The Search Engines Mad?
If you've been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for a while, you may remember the time when you could create a web page and get it ranked at the top of any search engine with little effort.All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you've captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.The major search engines were pretty easy to figure out. Some focused on the first 90 characters on a page, others gave more weight to the title tag in yo...(related: Search Engine Optimization)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Search Engine Optimization