Is there anyone who will look at a website I've done for a friend who has a small winery (www.pianettawinery.com) and tell me why Google and dmoz.org never listed it, even under the winery's name, Pianetta Winery. Or at least recommend a professional to help me, a relative novice.

I first submitted it through his hosting service Traffic Blazer submission service in May (I did not select resubmission in 45 days as an option) , but submitted it to Google and dmoz again, myself, manually, in August.

If for some reason, Google mistakenly has it banned as spam, is there some recourse or someone to write to? Thanks for any help.

Direct submission to Google is rarely a sure-fire way of getting listed on Google. My experience has shown that you stand a much higher chance of getting up there by having links to your website on other sites that are already listed on Google. So i'd suggest you start by getting your website listed on some relevant directories and your supplier / customer sites if possible.

I have not submitted a single site to Google in over 3 years - thats not the way in :)

You have to submit to ODP manually as well as other relevant directories. Never use automated submission porgrams for that! ODP in the US can take some time to get in to. If it's a regional ODP category it is often faster. Here in Denmark, for example, we most often get new sites in within days or weeks.

It looks like what you need the most right now is more external websites linking to you. If you get that then Google, as well as other search engines, will find your site and "think" it's important enough to visit and index. If you just submit it, with no (or very few) external links, search engines may not find it important enough to visit.

I did submit it on ODP myself about three times and have read in places that there is a shortage of editors so they don't add as often as they used to?
Since he is a rancher/wine farmer, I'm not sure who has supplier websites to link to him but I'll check. Where do I find popular directories that don't charge for links?
Thanks for the ideas.

I did submit it on ODP myself about three times and have read in places that there is a shortage of editors so they don't add as often as they used to?
You only need to submit to ODP once and then wait. From what I have heard, if you submit over and over again, your site could be moved to "the back of the line" in the queue it is waiting in.

What I usually do to get a brand new site listed is to either place a link to the site in our company news section, in our Client List and possibly even run a temporary ad on one of the portal sites we operate that are spidered daily. Getting listed in directories like JoeAnt, GoGuides, Skaffe, WoW, etc. will also help not only get the site indexed but keep it there.

What portal sites and types of free directories I have access to are spidered daily?
Would it also help to change all the indirect links to other pages on this site to direct links?
Thanks!

What portal sites and types of free directories I have access to are spidered daily?
Would it also help to change all the indirect links to other pages on this site to direct links?
Thanks!
not sure I understand that indirect links bit...

as far as free sites that get spidered daily, many of these seo forums would be good examples. if you have a blog which is updated regularly w good inbound link popularity that can be cool too.

What seobook is saying... is that you have already started doing what you need to do. You might have noticed there is a link to the site at the top of this page, that will be spidered soon.

Sometimes moderators will delete these types of posts/links, especially if it is noticed that they are being repeated on other forums ;-)

My question above about direct links was should I change my links to pages within the site to include the full URL?, ( ie, from index.html to http://www.pianettawinery.com)? Thanks again.

full or relative urls both are fine. search engines such as google convert any relative location to their full location before assigning a document # to the document which is being refered to.

Back to banning. Is there a list that Google keeps of sites that they rejected at one time for some reason, and if it is unreasonable, is there any way to know if you are on the list and is there any recourse that you can have? I've been trying on this site since May 2004. Thanks

Even though Google will index your pages with absolute (full) links, I would reccommend using absolute links within the HTML on all your pages, especially if your site name and directory names contain keywords relevant to your business.

For e.g. http://www.simply-paris.com/ is a site that provides hotel booking and tourist information about Paris. Obviously, the word Paris is a keyword for this site. Hence, using the full site name is advantageous in this case, rather than just relative linking e.g. index.html

Back to banning. Is there a list that Google keeps of sites that they rejected at one time for some reason, and if it is unreasonable, is there any way to know if you are on the list and is there any recourse that you can have?
no. there is no logical business reason why google would want to make such a list publically available.

full or relative urls both are fine.

IMHO, AccuraCast is correct - I too think all links should be absolute, thats because I like to build sites where the index page and the site map are really the only pages on the root level. All other important pages look something like this:
http://www.domain.com/key-word/index.html
Then, as you build the site using absolute links it puts the keywords in every url. Depending on who you ask this may be a good thing.

My question above about direct links was should I change my links to pages within the site to include the full URL?, ( ie, from index.html to http://www.pianettawinery.com)? Thanks again.

like this:
http://www.pianettawinery.com/

if you ever need to change the file type, say from .html to .aspx, .php, .asp etc. you will keep your ranking better this way. And, when external links point to you, most will point to the .com/ - and it cant hurt to have your internal and external links are pointing to the exact same page.

no. there is no logical business reason why google would want to make such a list publically available.
Of course you make sense. I guess I just want to know if they evaluate sites more than once and if they spider them again just in case I made some coding or incompatibility errors earlier. I did run it through a validator after I submitted it the first time and I corrected some things.
If they don't re-evaluate anew and there was a technical problem before, the domain name becomes a problem even if the site is fine.

delta, the site isn't banned and yes, Google comes back and crawls sites periodically, and re-evaluates for indexing. That's why rankings for sites changes.

The site is just simply not optimized at all for search engine placement, not even one little bit. Aside from getting some inbound links for Page Rank and some degree of link popularity (and you'll want some links using keyword rich anchor text), the site itself needs to be optimized.

Or at least recommend a professional to help me, a relative novice.
Nope, there's a forum in the Padded Room section here to post for help wanted and you're welcome to hire if the site owners are willing to pay (and SEO is *not* cheap) but it's simple enough for you to do yourself.

First thing, the very basis, is picking the keywords you want the site to be found for. Right now, it's primarily a brochure site about the winery itself. I don't know if that's the intention, but if what's wanted is to rank for purposes of selling wine online, the site will need product pages added that are optimized for s/e placement for the chosen keywords.

The focus of the site right now is on the winery, and imho is appropriate for a local business listing in ODP rather than a shopping listing. That could affect getting a listing; submitting to the proper category is the #1 step. Don't submit again - each time the submission supercedes the old one and starts from scratch. But first figure out what the focus of the site is really supposed to be - a company brochure or one that's for ecommerce.

What is it you'd like the site to rank for?

But first figure out what the focus of the site is really supposed to be - a company brochure or one that's for ecommerce.

What is it you'd like the site to rank for?

Okay, this is again helpful to me. This first year of production is relatively small so the objective was name recognition. When people meet him and know his name and forget the domain, they can look it up. When people taste the wine, they can search for it. He is competing with lots of wineries, so his niche is his appellation and what he offers. Hopefully by next release it will be modified and streamlined for ecommerce.
Other small sites I've done were always picked up right away, and searchable at least by the name of the business, so I thought something weird was going on. So it may be the geometric growth of new sites out there.
I'll look at the optimization guidelines again. Thanks.

Have you looked at the small directories? There was a list in one of the threads here.

Have you looked at the small directories? There was a list in one of the threads here.
Do you mean that if a smaller directory lists it, then the bigger ones may pick it up later? Thanks.