Helpful Information

Category: Search Engines

Problem with Google, and other Search engines.

I have a problem, one I cannot seem to solve on my own. I recently created this site:

http://www.stferdinand.org

For my local church. I used Dreamweaver MX 2004, as I have for other sites I have done.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why it isn't showing up on Google (or any other SEs for that matter). As I said, I've done other sites, and not had this problem before. It has been a number of weeks now, and I have actually 'submitted' it to Google.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? In case it matters here is the content of my robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /realaudio/
Disallow: test.htm

Any help is greatly appreciated, as one of the site's functions is supposed to be community outreach!

If it has only been a couple weeks then it may not have been spidered by the SE's yet. The only thing I notice about your page is that it has not meta tags for keywords or description. This shouldn't keep the SE's from adding you but it sure helps. Bottom line is it simply takes time. Also when you say it is not showing up what are you entering as a search term? If your searching useing something like "St. Ferdinand Parish" then it could be your link would be way down the line. One reasons for this may be that it looks like there are quite a few of them out there.

West Host has a page that gives more info on optimizeing our site for SE's. http://members.westhost.com/internet-marketing.html

I do not believe this to be the case. A few weeks ago I typed in something along the lines of "www.stferdinand.org" to see what happened, and one of the options it listed was to 'see Google's Cache of this page'. It showed the page and said it was last spidered on xx/xx/05.

This information now does not appear.

I understand your point about it being a common term, but even if you enter a string directly taken from the site, such as "If you have any intention you would like prayed for, you may write it in the Intention" it still return nothing. That should give me a direct hit, if Google is picking up the site.

I understand the concept of SEO (well at least enough to get by, or so I thought) but still it just doesn't even appear to be on Google's Radar. I will check out the link you provided to see if it can offer any further help.

As far as META tags go, it was my understanding that, at least to Google, they were almost of no use anymore, as they are so easily abused. I guess I will add some to see if it has an effect.

If anyone else has any thoughts on the matter, I would greatly appreciate it.

I had a look at the page and I can't see any obvious reason it wouldn't be spidered by google.
You could try validating it at http://validator.w3.org but first put in a DOCTYPE at the start of the file.
And you do show up in MSN....

Otherwise I think you just have to wait. :(

I am not wise in the way of aliases, domains, and sub-domains... but... could the fact that I am showing up on the other search engines as "stferdinand.org" and not "www.stferdiand.org" have anything to do with it?

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=st.+ferdinand&FORM=QBHP

This is the listing on MSN search. Notice how I am just 'stferdinand.org' where everyone else is www... whatever?

Could this be the problem why google is not picking me up? Does it mean anything? Do I have something configured improperly in the Manager?

Thanks.

Randall

PS - This was in my logs:

-:-:crawl-66-249-71-73.googlebot.com:Googlebot/2.1 :http://www.google.com/bot.html

So I'm assuming that means Google has in fact been to my site, and if I'm still not showing up (which I'm not) there must be another reason for it.... ?

My hobby, seo!

First of all, you are listed (11 of your pages).

whenever you want to know if a site is in the Google index at all, in the Google search box type:

site:mydomain.com

In your case "site:www.stferdinand.org" or "site:stferdinand.org" gave results so proves you are in there (you have been spidered).

Typing "link:www.stferdinand.org" (fallible, not necessarily covering all incoming links, but an indication nontheless) shows there are no links to the site indexed in Google, this is not good, Google will rank higher sites that people link to (this is the story about Google "Page Rank", read up on that).

Being a new listing, Google is slow to consider you for a good ranking (read up on the "Google sandbox" incidence) although you can give that a boost by linking from authoritative older sites.

You also have lots of competition for your search terms. There is another site "www.saintferdinand.org", and in general "saint ferdinand" and "catholic church" are very common search words.

Your best bet is to feature your location strongly, so people looking for a catholic church in missouri or florissant area or anything at all in florissant or missouri, will find the church through those keywords (which is what you want, not people looking for a "catholic" or "saint ferdinand" in timbouktu or keywest. To do this make sure the location appears complete in the title, and near the top of the content preferably in bold or with h1/h2 tag, and appears even several times in the text, so that Google will index your page strongly on the location. At the moment you have only one incidence of "Florissant" and "Missouri" in small type at the very bottom of the page, a mention of "Florissant" and "MO" in the title, and that's all. Force in some text, any excuse to fit in those vital keywords.
Also, consider further how people would find the site (and what keywords you offer Google to index your site). The keyword "Saint Ferdinand", appears only in the title, nowhere in the text. The keywords "St Ferdinand" appears nowhere, and "St. Ferdinand Parish" only once in small print at the bottom, but at least "St. Ferdinand" appears 7 times. Keywords in images are wasted, you should at least make an "alt" text for them.
So what keywords can people use to find the site and Google can use to index it? Think about that.

Another problem, is theme concentration. On your main page there are emphasized links to a golf tournamount, and St Louis' best fish fry (representing 1/3 of your main entry page content). You are not helping Google determine what this website is all about.

In summary, your main entry page needs relevant keywords and clear focus. Make a list for yourself on the main keywords you want to be found for, and ensure they are frequent and strong in your content and "alt" tags. Also, get other sites to link to it with a good anchor text (good=useful keywords).

Btw, otherwise well done site! compliments!
Nothing wrong with your robots.txt.
The issue of "www" or not is a long story (possible problems with duplicate content in Google depending on how you structure your website and server), but not an issue as you encountered it, don't worry about it.

hth

Thank you very much for this most helpful reply!