Site not indexing in google

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

Hi,

www dot theriverangler dot co dot uk

We have recently just gone live with our new fishing tackle website and have been looking at google webmasters to see how we are indexing for our site pages. We have around 1000 pages on the site but google only seems to be able to index around 170 of these. Worse still is when we check the /* of our site only 10 pages are showing.

We had a holding page up for a long time as the homepage which got a google pr2 but the web guys we are using have a redirect from this page to /shop which has a pr0 will this effect anything?

Have been told by a good friend to check that the site is coded correctly and to check what hosting they are using for the site. I checked the hosting and we seem to be on a server with 966 other websites, plus it also says that there may be hosting one or more web sites with explicit content on the server. Will this effect the sites performance?

I wish I found this forum earlier as i would have had the website done with the help of a SEO but we are now going about things a**e about face.

I have started to write unique content for each product instead of the dealers and edit the page titles. Is there anything I can do to try and boost the performance of the website now or is it too early?

[fisicx]

Don't worry about the indexing, just let Google do its thing and you should be fully indexed in a couple of months.

Don't worry about the PR2, it not going to make any difference to anything.

Don't worry about the shared hosting. 99/9% of all sites are on shared hosting.

Rewriting the words is the absolute best thing you can do. 10 a day means you will be finished in 3 months!

Next thing you will need to do is get some visitors onto the site. Test the site using PPC and see if anyone buys anything. If they do then that's great. If they don't then you need to start work on fixing the site.

You should be ready to start making money in about a year.

[SFD]

You should be ready to start making money in about a year.

Fisicx, I've heard you say this a couple of times, can you exapnd a bit please?

Do most (successful) sites not make money in the first year or do you mean most sites don't get enough traffic from the organic results in the first year to convet in to traffic?

[lesliedocherty]

It was about a year for us aswell before we started to make money, the key is every customer who orders, thats 1 person you can mail every week, keep chasing these customers.
Aslong as you sent the goods quickly, they had good service theres a good chance they'll use you next time.

Fisicx knows his stuff, always great advice

[fisicx]

Profit is waht you make after paying for the website, hosting, product catalogue and PPC. That's any awful lot of sales just to cover your costs. In year two you should be able to reduce the PPC and the website maintenance wuill be a lot less so you should at least break even.

Of course some sites will make money sooner and some may take 2-3 years to see a profit but most of the research I've read indicates that year 1 is just about getting established so don't expect to make any money. Anything you do make is a bouns.

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

So how much to you reckon we should be looking at spending on adwords per day, if we have 500 products that we make roughly 30% at the lowest and with our old site the average order was 50 pounds?

Problem is some keywords i know in our industry will get thousands of vistors to the site but the costs to get these vistors will be large and we could end up spending 100s if not 1000s, we would need a high conversion rate to meet our low margins.

[Kev Jaques]

look to the content network for angling/fishing forums, sites, etc for cheaper ads, you could still get top spots for sites if they're using ads

[Rags]

To keep your PPC costs down initially, focus on 'buying' keywords like specific names of pieces of equipment. You'll get better conversions that way as they've already decided what specific item to look for.

eg Fox Envoy 11ft Bomb Rod

and variations of that

Fox Envoy Bomb Rod
Envoy 11ft Bomb Rod
Fox 11ft Bomb Rod
Fox Envoy Bomb Fishing Rod

etc

You could also use various geographic modifiers on more general keywords:

instead of 'Fishing rod sale'

have

'Fishing rod sale London'
'Fishing rod sale Manchester'
'Fishing rod sale Essex'
'Fishing rod sale Brixton'

etc'

[LBtrading]

I have had a very quick look like 2 seconds,

The first thing i have noticed is your url structure ie navigation urls is as follows:
/shop/prodtype.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=92&numRecordPositi on=1

the longer the parimeters in the url the more trouble google has following the url,
maybe talk with the developer to get some urls rewriten depending on your hosting apache linux is to how you would tackle this

so that instead of the above it would look like site .com/accessories

Tip for fast indexing of all your site pages

do you have a sitemap?
If not create an xml site map
then build backlinks to the sitemap, this will send all the google,msn,yahoo bots to your sitemap and you sitemap will contain links to your product pages and other pages which google will then follow and index.

google will index more each time it visits so sometimes having the sitemap dynamically created to list random urls each time so that google will eventually index all urls

this is a slighty more advanced technique

but also this technique speeds up the indexing process a great deal but dont expect overnight results

[nass]

1) create an xml sitemap and upload it to your top directory
2) add a reference to that sitemap into a robots.txt file into the same directory

imo it'd then take 2 or so weeks and all your pages will go somewhere into the index. Their performance is another matter though.

[tb1234]

Deep links to pages within your site will help with indexing and the addition of regular new content will keep them coming back on a regular basis for more. Consider adding a blog to the site perhaps and a section with howtos as linkbait e.g. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-linkbait-and-linkbaiting/

It might also be worth looking at this. http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/legal/distance-selling-regulations/ (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/member.php?u=14942)

[QVA - Emma]

Hi there,

Make sure you also list your business in Google Business Centre under Google Maps. You can place numerous ads here and include your keywords and different areas etc.

Additionally registering with FreeIndex, BTTradespace etc will also boost your profile - you can also link to your website, display goods and products for sale and take part in the communities there.

Google does take its time to index but there is plenty you can do in the meantime to boost your online profile whilst your pages are finding their way to the top spot.

All the best:)

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

The url rewrite idea is a good one. The designers were asked to do this but as you have found out that they have not.

Tried to do the sitemap before but ran into some problems uploading it to the site and have asked the designers to correct it, however they seem to take even three days to answer an email.

Blog is coming however we dont have access to the server which is causing major problems especially as the web guys are so slow to do anything.

Doing a major fishing show at the weekend so hopefully can do some advertising there. Will have more of a try getting people to the site via adwords 2moz.

[QVA - Emma]

Tried to do the sitemap before but ran into some problems uploading it to the site and have asked the designers to correct it, however they seem to take even three days to answer an email.

Do you mean uploading to Google webmaster or to your website?

You can submit the xml file manually, if it is correct to Google directly until your designers get round to helping you.

Regards

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

Both when i use the gcrawler software there is a problem with the server and when I try to add it to google it tells me there is a 404 error. I think the web guys have set the 404 page up wrong as this also effects the url rewrite that they were supposed to do.

[QVA - Emma]

Ah i see,

just had a quick look and as far as I can see there is a sitemap but is .asp - so it is part of the site.

I also then went on to check your designers site for an .xml but they don't have one either. They may have created one off site and uploaded manually - but it seems a little strange.:| The sitemap has to be saved in the top level of your domain.

If you check my site. www.quartetvirtualassistance.co.uk/sitemap.xml this is how it should look and should include this kind of info.

If you need any help just let me know:)

Hope this helps

[nass]

Both when i use the gcrawler software there is a problem with the server and when I try to add it to google it tells me there is a 404 error. I think the web guys have set the 404 page up wrong as this also effects the url rewrite that they were supposed to do.

I'm just making one for you with gcrawler, works fine for me? pm me your email and I'll ping it over when it's done

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

Managed to do one manually but you save it to your computer and how do you add it to google through webmasters then?

[QVA - Emma]

Do you mean uploading to Google webmaster or to your website?

You can submit the xml file manually, if it is correct to Google directly until your designers get round to helping you.

Regards

:redface:Sorry my apologies I wasn't very clear - it has to be uploaded to your website first as an .xml or .txt file - then you can submit through Google webmaster, you can also do this on Yahoo. My fault for speed reading your other post re having problems connecting to the server.

Now you have the sitemap hope you can get the connection up and get your problem resolved.

Kind Regards

[nass]

I've stopped running off my one for you then, it was taking forever. I'm not seeing much evidence of rewriting. Btw also you don't need to add it to google's WMT if you do as I say, use robots.txt.

[fisicx]

The url rewrite idea is a good one. The designers were asked to do this but as you have found out that they have not.

It makes no difference at all to Google. The URL is not a ranking factor and they advise against doing url rewrites.

[Eagle]

As an aside, are you happy with your logo? I can provide an alternative suggestion (artwork and files) for free, if you'll indulge me.

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

We are happy with the design of the site and the logo. We should be as we paid enough for the design only.

[malcolmcoles]

We are happy with the design of the site and the logo. We should be as we paid enough for the design only.
Um, if your site is riverangler.co.uk, why does your logo say riverangler.com?

Or is it just too late at night for me to think straight?

[Eagle]

We are happy with the design of the site and the logo. We should be as we paid enough for the design only.
Ok, no problem. :)

[fisicx]

We are happy with the design of the site and the logo. We should be as we paid enough for the design only.

There are however a number of usability issues with the site that may affect your sales so you may find you will need quite a few changes over the next few months in order to make the site effective. These changes may well affect the way google indexes and ranks the site.

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

There are however a number of usability issues with the site that may affect your sales so you may find you will need quite a few changes over the next few months in order to make the site effective. These changes may well affect the way google indexes and ranks the site.

Agreed as with any new site I guess you cant get everything right first off. Our two main issues that we are trying to deal with are:

Having a phone number avaible
Having a another payment system other than paypal
If you can see any other problems do say? We have had people test and use the site, and they think it works quite well.

The logo is .com because we own that domain and we think it looks more professional to have a .com than a .co.uk.

[IainW]

fisicx is right in saying your site has a number of issues that will affect your indexing which obviously effects your ranking.

Hire someone to give a complete appraisal of your site, it will be money well spent.

I can see some issues instantly so I would imagine other problems lie deeper.

Nothing to worry about but get it done as soon as poss so that you can reach a wider audience.

Nice site though, bit more colour possibly a border around the site and more pictures of big fish.

Good luck
Iain

[fisicx]

The logo is .com because we own that domain and we think it looks more professional to have a .com than a .co.uk.

I disagree - .com tends to means US or international companies. .co.uk tells me you are a UK company and will understand my needs.

If you can see any other problems do say? We have had people test and use the site, and they think it works quite well.

Font size is too small - makes it difficult to read. You use the same styles for bold text as you do for links. You are asking the visitor to guess which is which. The lack of content on many of the pages makes the site seem very bland, there is no warm feeling. The descirptions are very weak. You have a review system but no reviews, if people think the site isn't popular then they will go to one that is. Page titles are really weak - they are unlikely to catch the eye of google. Same with the meta description, product name and sub headers. The images are all wrong and even the enlarged images are still too small. The payment links are in the wrongplace and not a call to action. Definately need you contact details on every page. The more I look the more I discover....

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

Ok I see what you mean about the logo, which I will try to edit and just cut off the .com.

Agreed about the font size and style which i will change today. I actually had the same feeling last night when i was using the site.

Think I will turn off the site reviews, as i guess this does put people off.

Page Titles, Product Name, Meta description and sub headers, I will have to speak to the web guys about (if their still alive) as at the moment they dynamically generated by the system and I want to overide this!

Not quite sure what you mean by the payment links being in the wrong place?

Can anyone suggest a good firm to do a appraisal that will not cost the earth?

[fisicx]

Not quite sure what you mean by the payment links being in the wrong place?

They are below the fold on some products. Get the price up the top next to the image (which should be on the left) and have a big 'buy this item' button underneath. Think like a fisherman. Need a rod - select a brand or type - find one I like - buy the thing. If you lead the potential customer by the hand and make sure the buttons you want him to press are right in fron of his eyes with big glowing letters then the chances of competing a sale increase.

So you need an major rethink of your categories on the left and how you then display the sub-categories and lerad the customer onto the products you want to shift.

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

I see what you mean now and think we need to make the site easier for people to use. However really not sure that the picture needs to be moved to the left, although I know most websites have the pictures here.

[fisicx]

I see what you mean now and think we need to make the site easier for people to use. However really not sure that the picture needs to be moved to the left, although I know most websites have the pictures here.

A picture paints a thousand words - It should be on the left and a lot bigger. If images on the right worked Amazon would be doing it. In the case of a rod, make it fit across the whole section and ensure the enlarged image is ginormouse. Even better have lots of close ups of the fittings so the potential customer can see exactly what they are getting.

[www.theriverangler.co.uk]

The categories idea is one we may have to change. We have looked at having the categories on the left done in java so when the user hovers over the link the sub cat's appear. Do you think there is another way?

[fisicx]

The categories idea is one we may have to change. We have looked at having the categories on the left done in java so when the user hovers over the link the sub cat's appear. Do you think there is another way?

How do fishermen search? Do they prefer particular brands or do they look for types of equipment or is price an issue? Build you category lists for your customers - this is what I meant by testing and chacking, keep working on different formats and styles until you finfd the one that works. Each site/niche is different, what works for you may not work for sea fishing.

So try different versions, give each one a month and see how things go.

[rossi4673]

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[OldWelshGuy]

1 in 7 (on average) searches results in a click on PPC, 6:7 to Organic listings.

This is an average and is dependent on many factors such as local listings, product listings etc.