Gone from google since 5-23

[guzie]

Our website is a simple gardening information website mostly for regional viewers. We were getting decent traffic from google with various keywords.
We had numerous pages in the top 10 listing.

However we vanished from the rankings on or about 5-23-05.

We are still listed and get good traffic from yahoo and other S.E's.

I also noticed that we are not banned. related:guzmansgreenhouse.com
Tells me we are on google and have recently been indexed on 6-4-05.

I am sure we need more backlinks (currently in the process).

We try to do everything by the book (googles book).
Can anyone shed some light on what we might have done?

Thanks from a new member.
Paul Guzman

[Carlos Chacón]

Your site looks very potential in terms of SEO.
Good content especially, after that just prioritize SEO elements. Remember that SEO is a huge puzzle…

[guzie]

Thanks for your reply Carlos.

What do you mean by "prioritize SEO elements".

Actually I was doing quite well in google then all of a sudden whoosh! Gone from google rankings.

Except for one keyword phrase "drought plants" check it out - right on top.
I've done the same s.e.o. for this webpage as the others. Anyone have Ideas as to why?

We are still listed and not sandboxed. And we still get decent visitors from yahoo, msn and others.

What I am trying to understand is, what do I need to do in order to get back to where I was before?

Where do I go to find out? Does anyone have an honest answer.
Do I need to go back to squre one and re-do our website according to googles new conditions? And if so - WHERE?

This is a one man operation with a 140 page website. I also have a full time normal job!

Thanks for YOUR time
Paul Guzman :)

[Carlos Chacón]

Prioritize SEO elements means to organize your web site in two parts:
1-Internal: metas, few javas, css
2-External: fresh new content, content, content

In your particular case, it looks that you have a great site but it looks that it needs some tweak especially on the internal part.

Remember that Google uses 9 different Datacenters, check some SEO tools like: www.yourcache.com , http://www.searchdance.com/sevenwaysearch.html or others.

[guzie]

Oh boy Carlos I feel like a real dummy :(

What do you mean by "1-Internal: metas, few javas, css"
Is it done by html or some other application.

Fresh new content I can do without a problem.

I have meta-tags, javascript and css do they need to go in some seperate file?
I am totally baffled here.

Maybe a small example would help.

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Paul Guzman

[Carlos Chacón]

Oh boy Carlos I feel like a real dummy :(

What do you mean by "1-Internal: metas, few javas, css"
Is it done by html or some other application.

Fresh new content I can do without a problem.

I have meta-tags, javascript and css do they need to go in some seperate file?
I am totally baffled here.

Maybe a small example would help.

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Paul Guzman

Look; your site looks pretty much well on content and background, so do not feel like a dummy ;)

But, if I do a search for “drought plants”, this page in particular looks a little small –in SEO terms- if you look the code.
What I mean? Well, remember to optimize every page as well, not only your main page.

I suggest you to organize a better internal structure for your entire website. At least includes a Meta description, Meta keywords and Meta robot tag.

[guzie]

Thanks again Carlos

But I am still NOT following you.

But, if I do a search for “drought plants”, this page in particular looks a little small –in SEO terms- if you look the code.
What exactley do you mean by "small in SEO terms" not enough keywords,
not enough content? Please be a little me explicit.

Remember to optimize every page as well, not only your main page.
That is what I did before now most of our pages are buried deep in googles searches!
At least includes a Meta description, Meta keywords and Meta robot tag.
I have meta description and keywords but now meta robot - I want every S.E. robot to visit so why do I need one?

I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.
Paul Guzman

[Carlos Chacón]

Thanks again Carlos

But I am still NOT following you.


What exactley do you mean by "small in SEO terms" not enough keywords,
not enough content? Please be a little me explicit.


That is what I did before now most of our pages are buried deep in googles searches!
.
I have meta description and keywords but now meta robot - I want every S.E. robot to visit so why do I need one?

I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.
Paul Guzman

Hi Paul,

Remember there’s no a magic SEO formula available right now. :)
About which Meta you should use on your pages, Meta title & Meta keywords are just the basic. Remember sometimes the SE does not take care of it, but they still being the top “light” for the crawl on any website.

These Meta are basically which says the Spider to come just like an invitation:

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> OR <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" />

*Evidently, this is not a rule but it is a guide line.

In other hand, remember your website is like a house… ONE main entrance and SOME exit doors. In SEO terms, I always consider my entire website like a potential “many entrance doors”… and not only one.

About your site: Your content is really good, your site too. Just maximize the opportunity to build it in order to invite at the spiders.
;)

[guzie]

Thanks for you all your help.

Can you pm me your website? It would be very interesting to see how yours is setup.

Thanks again
Paul Guzman

[glengara]

FWIW, the monster WmW update thread mentioned affiliates being hit, particularly those with insufficient original content.

You've quite a number of affiliate links, how much of the content is exclusive to the site?

[guzie]

FWIW, the monster WmW update thread mentioned affiliates being hit, particularly those with insufficient original content.
Top of my head - 75% of our site is original content.

I do have numerous pages that are almost pure affiliate links!

Do I remove all the affiliate links so that google can once again rank my original content pages back in the top 10 or so?

If what your say is true then are "affiliate links" dead?

By the way what does "WmW" mean? or where can I learn more about it?

Thanks for YOUR time
Paul Guzman

[glengara]

WmW is Webmasterworld.com, famous for its update threads, but this one beats them all, the affiliate thing was only a FYI, just about everything has been blamed at this stage, including AdSense publishing ;-)

However, I looked at one section, organic seeds I think, and the descriptions seem to have been taken from the affiliated site, may be safer to change those anyway.

I also looked at your indexed pages, a lot of "supplemental results", but that may simply be due to your low PR, a number of Url only too, and these seem to be either affiliate pages or guest articles, I'd check out those articles to ensure there's no duplication.

You also need some more links, find out what category garden centres are usually placed in, and submit the site to this DMOZ category
Regional: North America: United States: New Mexico: Localities: L: Las Cruces

If you get in, you've enough original content to overcome the affiliation bit, if you don't, you'll know you haven't.

[guzie]

I am already listed in the DMOZ directory... Been there over a year.
Did a search today for our website it is there.

We have decent traffic from yahoo, msn, altavista and other small engines.
But nowhere close to what we got from google!

What I can't figure out is this: the keyword phrase "drought plants" (without quotes). We are number 1. Been there for quite some time. Why no drop there? The page has affiliate links and a pr2. I have many other pages that I have good original content and have dropped out of sight some with pr3!

What do you mean by supplemental results?

Thanks for your time glengara.
p.s. I am starting to feel that is would be better to optimize for yahoo and others and forget about google!

[stu2]

Hi Guzie,

I was in the same boat as you (sandboxed). I used Google Sitemaps and was restored entirely to their index in approx <24-<72 hours.

stu

[mcanerin]

For the record, the following tag:

<meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" />

Does not work. Anywhere. It was a tag used by a Canadian search engine in the 90's that searched for sites in the province of British Columbia. (Vancouver Web Pages) At one point they put up a resource on metatags, and since the concept was so new to webmasters there were a lot of people who used these tags.

No current major search engine uses this tag, no current major search ever has.

Other bogus tags include:

meta name="vw96"
meta http-equiv="keywords"
meta http-equiv="description"

(note that meta name="keywords" & meta name="description" are ok)

Also, these tags:

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> OR <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow" />

... are actually redundant, though valid. The default behavior for search engines is to index and follow unless told not to, so these won't actually do anything for you.

FYI,

Ian

[guzie]

Sooooooo

The best policy is NOT to employ any of the tags you have mentioned?

Currently I have only the following on my home (index page) only.
Is this ok Yes of No?

<title>My Title name</title>
<meta name="Description" content="my content keywords">
<meta name="KeyWords" content="my kewords">
<meta name="distribution" content="global">
<meta name="rating" content="General">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="2 days">

The rest of my pages have only
<title>My Title name</title>
<meta name="Description" content="my content keywords">
<meta name="KeyWords" content="my kewords">

Thanks again mcanerin
I love this forum......Where else can I go to get "FREE" advice!
Paul Guzman

[mcanerin]

I have a fully functional (and free) metatag generator (http://www.mcanerin.com/search-engine/metatag-generator.htm) I made for my clients here, though of course you can use it too.

Regarding your metatags I would change them to:

<title>My Title name</title>
<meta name="Description" content="my content keywords">
<meta name="KeyWords" content="my keywords">

the other 3 lines are not really relevant or useful.

In order to be complete, there are other tags which are useful (and are required to validate to W3C standards). Keep in mind that for search engine purposes only the above 3 matter, and arguably the keywords one doesn't (Google ignores it).

An example of a complete header for your site would probably be something like:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html lang="en-us">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>your title</title>
<meta name="description" content="Your description">
<meta name="keywords" content="your, keywords, here">
</head>

Cheers,

Ian

[AussieWebmaster]

www.easytogrowbulbs.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=49

This tag from one of your inbound links over at Yahoo may have an impact.

[guzie]

This tag from one of your inbound links over at Yahoo may have an impact.

Could you please elaborate? I have visited the link and our website is listed there. It looks like a good inbound link?

Thanks for YOUR time
Paul Guzman

[AussieWebmaster]

The tracking code contains this: &ID=49 (http://www.easytogrowbulbs.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=49) which has been shown to cause problems and in your case may have subverted the engine.

Look for the thread that discusses this usage.

[guzie]

The tracking code contains this: &ID=49 which has been shown to cause problems and in your case may have subverted the engine.
Look for the thread that discusses this usage.

Where is this thread you are talking about? I have done numerous searches.
And come up empty.

Once again please tell me more or direct me in the right direction.
Thanks
Paul Guzman

[martinuboo]

Where is this thread you are talking about? I have done numerous searches.
And come up empty.

Once again please tell me more or direct me in the right direction.
Thanks
Paul Guzman

I think this is the thread AussieWebmaster mentioned: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=6123

martin

[AussieWebmaster]

That's the one... thanks Martin.