Google will only find my sites by sitename 2

[mikesh27]

During September I submitted 5 sites (six if you include one identical one with two domains on two servers) to google.com/addurl, submitit.bcentral and the 14 freebies on addme.com.

I checked Google every week for three and a half weeks, then finally on the first day of October, I could find all six, but only by site name with or without extension.

In other words a search on "ABC Computer Solutions" doesn't find my site, but if I type in "AbcComputerSolutions" it does. Also it only displays the website address as a result with no text other than a "similar pages" link.

My knowledge of search engines is more limited than even I thought, but I have tried to follow advise on this forum and others with TITLE, HEADINGs and KEYWORD RICH body text. I have bi-directional links to all sites and I thought this helped.

It may be a stupid question, but once Google indexes the sites, do we have to wait until the next index before any changes to site are updated as well?

Could anyone please advise where I could have gone wrong. I didn't expect to get very far up the search order with all six, but would have thought I could find my sites by putting in the name of the company.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Mike

 

[mikesh27]

Chris,

Thanks for link pop info.

How do I check if I'm still getting visits from Googlebot?

This afternoon I will change the abccs.co.uk homepage to link to abccomputersolutions.co.uk.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[ChrisHirst]

strategy Hmm! sounds like there was a plan involved

Basically the site was in frames (still is) They design and update themselves with some occasional input from me. The plan was simply to make the site more User and SE friendly. Obviously with frames there was a lot of orphaned pages that appeared in the SERPs. That was fixed by using SearchMechanics SRF script and then tweaking the JShop templates to include some more links and the script. A re-jig of the internal navigation into the top frame and frameset page, as well as creating a proper page inside the <noframes> body.
Then a couple of weeks getting some new backlinks and attempting to get the anchor text of a few existing ones changed and Hey Presto. it took about 8 weeks to get there after that and it also survived "Florida" where 75% of the first 3 pages of results disappeared. (Good boost in sales there)
Really that's benefit of not trying too hard, get it right and it will have staying power rather than needing continuous updates or tweaking. Then you can concentrate on other things.

The comments do absolutely nothing usefull whatsoever. I just haven't managed to convince him as yet.

Mike,
Check your access logs for Googlebots User-Agent or if you have any stats package included with the hosting take a look in there.




Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[mikesh27]

xtendscott/Chris,
Implementing many of your suggestions now - have already redirected abccs.co.uk. Thank you for your time and patience in explaining things to a complete amateur.

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[xtendscott]

Mike,

With IIS servers a 301 redirect, I believe has to be done by the administrator(ISP). I don't know the technical differences(chris might, not sure if it has the 301 header) but on some Domain Registrars(I use Godaddy), they have an option to forward/redirect a domain to another. This is different from both domains pointing to the same server. You might have that option as a simple fix.

I believe this is what chris was refering to when he suggested transfering at the DNS level.

What you want is when you type abccs.co.uk into the browswer, you want it to automatically change by the redirect to abccomputersolutions.co.uk.

xtendscott
Web Site Design and CF Programming

 

[mikesh27]

xtendscott,

I remember .htaccess as a Unix file (from setting up Linux servers when web hosts were far more expensive) but have read:

"The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next spidering, the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file. The search engine spider doesn't actually read the .htaccess file, but recognizes the response from the server as valid."

Okay, in my situation with a poor ranking anyway would a 301 but any better than the way I have set up on

http://www.abccs.co.uk?

Best regards,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[xtendscott]

Right now when you go to

http://www.abccs.co.uk

you see a page that says click here. It is still a live site. If there are any links to that site, somewhere out there, those possible links don't give the site your keeping any benefit. It also makes the users click an extra time to get from the dead site to yours(potential loss of customer).

If there is very little chance of unknown links to that site you can just kill it and forget it or create totally new site. If there is a possibility of links then I would 301 it to the desired site.

As it is now, it is still live and still may help if there is a possible "duplicate content" penalty. Don't spend a lot of time on it.

Build quality content and get links.



xtendscott
Web Site Design and CF Programming

 

[ChrisHirst]

Mike,

if you can't get to the admin to do a redirect from there put this in the .htaccess of abccs seeing as it is running on Apache.

Redirect 301 / [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.yourdomain.com/[/URL]

and have the DNS moved ASAP, but as I see you're hosted with Demon, if I go by my experiences it may take some time to transfer.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[mikesh27]

Chris/xtendscott,

Rang Demon Tech to try an admin change and waited..........and waited..........and waited.........

So created .htaccess (previously not one on server) with one line only using the code:

redirect 301 /

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

When I checked

http://www.abccs.co.uk

I got a "cannot find page" error, so had to revert to plan A while I get it sorted.

I had already deleted all the old htm files from abccs (excent index.hm) to stop spiders picking them up and all links to abccs from abccomputersolutions now gone. Killing links to abccs on other sites today.

Any ideas why error?

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[mikesh27]

Chris,

Sorted!!

For 301, needed to leave blank line after text.

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[ChrisHirst]

Great,

No it's a wait and see period what happens with the SEs.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[ChrisHirst]

I should use preview to compensate for my crap typing


that should be

Now it's ...



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

http://www.candsdesign.co.uk

A website that proves the cobblers kids adage.

http://www.cram-system.com

Nightclub counting systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[mikesh27]

Big thanks to ChrisHirst and xtendscott. My sites are gradually getting there with Google.

Thanks for all your tips. Had to add my first client to my signature temporarily to give them a boost. It worked for me as xtendscott suggested.

All the best guys and keep up the good work.

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

http://www.hamptoncarcentre.co.uk

 

[mikesh27]

PS - Still have to sort that iframe. Will replace with a little bit of flash or maybe just animated gif.

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

http://www.hamptoncarcentre.co.uk