Why doesn't my site appear in Google?

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Xarra

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It's got metadata, it's searchable, no errors are found... but it doesn't appear for Light Photographic or Coventry Photography...

Anyone able to give me any advice? o.O

The website is Lightphotographic.com which redirects to Coventry-Photography.com

Clare
 
It takes a while for google to "pick up" new site as I understand it, I was also told that the more often the site is updated also helps push it up the ratings.
 
Your site is listed on Google (search for your actual domain name and you can see your sites indexed by Google) its just not very well ranked for the keywords you mentioned so you will be way down the page numbers for organic search results.

Redirects and stuff like that are sometimes a cause of poor rankings (if not done correctly) but another obvious problem is that you don't have many relevant inbound links to your website, getting some of these will help with your organic search position.
 
A good trick to get better rankings is do a search say coventry and try get reprocial links from the top 5 sites
 
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Mainly, because there's not much text for Google to rank you on...

Try running the site through this checker to see what kind of results you get;

http://www.metamend.com/seo-tools/free-seo-test/

Good links are always handy, but site content is key IMO.

What terms are you trying to rank on Google for?
 
mattyh said:
Good links are always handy, but site content is key IMO.
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I disagree, both are very important imo, they aren't mutually exclusive to each other, if you want to get to the top then you need both good content/site structure and good inbound links.

Your site Matt is a classic example of a good site that has decent enough on site optimisation and structure but lacks a lot on the inbound links side of things, your PR of 0 and relatively low ranking for your chosen search terms are very much a factor of these lack of inbound links imo.

Get some decent inbound link to your website and watch your PR go up and your organic position improve too.
 
Mike - thanks for that. I'm wondering why my metadata doesn't show up though - as I have a lot of search terms in that!

Annoyingly, I'm struggling to find places that will link to my site as all the search terms for Coventry Photography are other photographers!
 
The first part is the text that Google ranks (it does not show the metadata), it only looks to see if the metadata is consistent - in reality the metadata is not that important any more, but certainly does not harm by having it. You really need a minimum of 150 words and more realistically 250 words on the page - dont overdo the search terms.

Yes the best links will be from other photographers in coventry but links from photography sites and for things that have coventry in the name will help.

Why have you not got anything posted in your signature here?

Mike
 
I think you need to check your HTML .. I just did a view source... I cant see an END to BODY or HTML .. any script/spider/bot that arives at your page will require a start and finish... bad html is bad for google.


Also.. Would suggest your TITLE is too long for bookmarking.

I think the redirect wont help either to be honest
 
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Hello,

I have just had a browse at your site and its back end coding.

I like the design think its cool

Any way to your last post, do waste too much time on meta data other than the essentials, like description, title. etc, put some keyworkds in the keywords tag but don't spend too much time on them as its out dated.

are you able to minimise the use of javascript there? perhaps with Jquery and css.

If you want more descriptive info and how to shuffle bits n bobs to make a better back end presentation pm me with an email and will email you when i am at home.

do you use Google webmaster tools and analytics?
 
As Kipax says the title is long and if Light Photographic isn't your main keyword remove it, google will take your title as a very important area of the site.

The main para of text doesn't suggest much other than the title, give a good descriptive keyword driven paragraph (without keyword stuffing thought)

As i say i will get my thinking cap on tonight if you want
 
mike weeks said:
Why have you not got anything posted in your signature here?

Mike
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Makes no odds anyway, or so I'm led to believe, as Google won't pick up on it anyway. Someone may be able to clarify this.
 
Dman said:
Makes no odds anyway, or so I'm led to believe, as Google won't pick up on it anyway. Someone may be able to clarify this.
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if the site has a no follow then it will not make a diff but if there isn't a nofollow on the board then why not put it there.
 
mike weeks said:
I can tell you with absolute certainty that the links from here are recognised by Google.

Mike
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They do appear and nofollow won't stop them being indexed, but with the tag added by the forum they add no value to your rankings

Xarra - having keywords and search terms in your meta tags just isn't good enough anymore. It's rumoured that most search engines now take no notice of your meta data and rely on content for search terms instead
 
mike weeks said:
Sorry but they do add value, it just happens to be not as high a value as links that have follow allowed.

Mike
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The 'nofollow' tag is an instruction to search engines not to use the link for ranking. They add value in other ways (indexing etc) but not to your ranking

this article explains in detail what that tag does, and how it works with the different bots but the main thrust of it is quoted below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML a element to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring.
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mike weeks said:
And Wikipedia is always right? Google never used to list the no-follow links in webmaster tools but now does and each time they add something there you can be sure that it has some effect. I will continue to follow what Google tells me and not Wikipedia.

Mike
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The wiki comment is a strange response Mike - I didn't say it(wikipedia) was always right but googling nofollow tags brings that up first and it is generally reasonably accurate.

I noticed they added them in webmaster tools, but they've also made quite alot of other changes in that section.

Anyway as the wiki link wasn't enough - from google guidelines http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
 
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As a lecturer we tell all our students that quotes from Wikipedia are not valid, something that is considered the norm in the academic community, so although it has lots of good information as it can be edited by anybody it should not be trusted.

Google do not publish how they rank and index sites but much information can be gleaned from papers they publish and from the services they provide. Your link from Google does not state whether no-follow links are used for ranking or not and based upon papers read and past experience of new features appearing in the webmaster tools it is far more likely that they are affecting rankings.

Mike
 
I've managed to gain a decent Google ranking but the process took at least 12months of regular site improvements/link building.

From my experience accurate keywording (avoid too much though) is essential and links are definitely useful too - not just any links however, Google seems to prefer links that are relevant to your own site content.

It also seems that site blogs help, perhaps this is because they mean your site content changes/updates regularly which perhaps results in Google scanning your site more often.

To gain decent page ranking definitely takes some prolonged effort/thought

Simon
 
mike weeks said:
As a lecturer we tell all our students that quotes from Wikipedia are not valid, something that is considered the norm in the academic community, so although it has lots of good information as it can be edited by anybody it should not be trusted.
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Thats a fair point, but TP isn't the academic community.

mike weeks said:
Google do not publish how they rank and index sites but much information can be gleaned from papers they publish and from the services they provide. Your link from Google does not state whether no-follow links are used for ranking or not and based upon papers read and past experience of new features appearing in the webmaster tools it is far more likely that they are affecting rankings.

Mike
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my link from google says

How does Google handle nofollowed links?

In general, we don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.
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webmaster tools and rankings aren't the same thing. Google has specifically told you that the nofollow tag means that pagerank is not transferred. Maybe you'd point to a link/paper etc..........that implies the nofollow tag does add to your ranking
 
There is a difference between PageRank and the ranking of how pages are returned for a specific search - please note how I phrased my answer. You do it your way and I will do it mine. If people make the effort there is plenty of info out there however it is often contradictorary and one of the best guides is to look for the date of the original article.

Mike
 
mike weeks said:
There is a difference between PageRank and the ranking of how pages are returned for a specific search - please note how I phrased my answer. You do it your way and I will do it mine. If people make the effort there is plenty of info out there however it is often contradictorary and one of the best guides is to look for the date of the original article.

Mike
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Mike,

Your phrasing of answers is now a bit contradictory - Pagerank, is as you say only part of the picture of how you rank in a given search, but all your previous posts have said, or implied, that nofollow links count towards your Pagerank. Can you point me to a paper, post or article that supports this?

Thanks

Hugh
 
Its pointless arguing what does and doesn't effect page rank, Google doesn't publish the algorithm for it and although snippets can be gleaned from stuff they do publish around the subject no one can say for sure how PR is derived.

"In general" - whenever that is used as the start of a sentence you have to accept that what follows doesn't apply to absolutely everything, they are leaving the door open on purpose because there are exceptions.

Because of the above statement and also because Google isn't the only search engine its still worth having links from pages that have a no follow tag imo, its also natural that you will have some links from no follow pages so if you don't have any I think your links strategy would look less organic which is something Google wouldn't like.

There's no absolutes in search engine strategy, there's shed loads of info. out there but much of it is complete guess work, and besides which the goal posts are always moving so what worked previously may no work in the future, most of the stuff I have done is by benchmarking/reverse engineering other sites that are on page 1.
 
simplistic answer

there are 2 major variables. Keyword density, and inbound links

You need to keep your keyword density for a phrase high enough for the page to be relevant to a search, but low enough for you to not be spaming

Lets say (for example) we grade a page from 1-10 on keyword density, and you page scores 2

Next we will look at inbound links, and to be ultra simplistic, lets just look at the number of different domains that point to you (forgetting their page rank)

Lets say you have 20 domains pointing at you.

Being really simplistic again, you now have a score of
20 x 2 = 40...

When someone searches, if the competition is high, google puts the search results in score order

So my page with a score of 800 will appear higher than yours with a score of 40

When you look at it like this you will realise that onpage SEO just tells google what the page is about, and about its relevance to the search. Off page SEO multiplies this up

___

In the real world, in a competitive market assume all your competitors have perfect on page SEO, so yours needs to be perfect too. You can do keyword analysis of your site and your competitors, and ensure the densities are comprable

___

That leaves inbound links. Yahoo site explorer will show you how well you are doing, and how well your competitors are doing. Assuming all onpage SEO is pretty perfect (thats both your competition,and yourr site), you will then find out that you need 1, 100, 1000, 100000 inbound links (depending on the competition)

I know this works. I predicted how many inbound links Ii needed (nearly 1000) and went and got them (over a period of months), and 3 weeks later I was in page 1 position 2 (my target) There is a technique in getting these links, and trust me, its hard work, and there are few shortcuts
 
Whilst some of that is true Richard the inbound links part isn't quite as simple as you made it sound imo.

Its not just a quantity game for inbound links, quality of the inbound link, the link text, PR and content of the linking page are very important as well.

I know sites that have double, triple and more than the amount of links that others have with equally good on-site optimization yet they don't position as highly.
 
Mike,

Its not about finding fault or anything else - I'm genuinely interested as to where you get the information that links with a nofollow tag add rank? I'll ask your forgiveness then for reading posts such as

mike weeks said:
Sorry but they do add value, it just happens to be not as high a value as links that have follow allowed.

Mike
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as implying that no follow links do add value to PageRank.

Hugh
 
Wedding-Photos said:
Whilst some of that is true Richard the inbound links part isn't quite as simple as you made it sound imo.

Its not just a quantity game for inbound links, quality of the inbound link, the link text, PR and content of the linking page are very important as well.

I know sites that have double, triple and more than the amount of links that others have with equally good on-site optimization yet they don't position as highly.
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I did say I was being "very simplistic". The real detail is quite complex. However as a primer, its a good solid starting point

Its like a car - you need a engine, gearbox, and tyres and aerodynamics. A lot of people only consider the engine to be important, when infact all the component parts are important, and its the culmulation of all of the component parts that determines the top speed

At the moment, the debate above my thread was discussing aero & engine, and ignoring gearbox. So there is no point in talking about crankshafts and compresion ratios quite yet
 
Richard King said:
I did say I was being "very simplistic". The real detail is quite complex. However as a primer, its a good solid starting point

Its like a car - you need a engine, gearbox, and tyres and aerodynamics. A lot of people only consider the engine to be important, when infact all the component parts are important, and its the culmulation of all of the component parts that determines the top speed

At the moment, the debate above my thread was discussing aero & engine, and ignoring gearbox. So there is no point in talking about crankshafts and compresion ratios quite yet
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Fair enough, you did say simplistic at the start but then seemed to put breaks in your reply and gave a real world example for your second part which seemed to be talking a lot more hard and fast figures, which is why I felt the need to reply.

I don't think you can look at someone else's site and say "I need 1,000 links to get above them" because its a lot more complicated than that as you could get above them with 100 links or still be below them with 3,000 links, that's the only bit I wanted to clarify as you seemed to be talking absolutes but if you weren't then fair enoughski.
 
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