Website indexing by Google

[amidoingthisright]

Does anyone have any insights as to why Google is only indexing the home page of our site?

Apologies for the fairly vague question but after going through all the guides available online I'm not sure what to try next.


www.maddoxstreet.co.uk


Many thanks

[Redarress]

Hi,
Have you submitted the site to Google ?
Have you submitted a sitemap to Google ?

Google needs to know your site is there and a way to speed this up is to use the google tools for this

Hope that points you in the right direction

[amidoingthisright]

Thanks, I've submitted the site map to google it shows 9 discovered URLs but only the one indexed page.
Tried to resubmit it again today only to get the same outcome.

[LooneyTunes]

Your robots.txt specifies yiur sitemap as being at: sitemap.xml

Sitemap.xml contains one entry, Pages-sitemap.xml

The latter seems to be where your actual sitemap is.

It could be that that’s not helping things. Not looked at the source as it’s awkward to do from an iPad, but you could also check that you don’t have noindex / nofollow metatags accidentally being used?

[amidoingthisright]

Thanks, when I looked at the site map it did look a little empty. I've now updated it on the google search console to pages-sitemap.xml which may help?

On the meta tags, I've checked that on Wix where the site was built and there's no, nofollow or noindex tags on there.

[LooneyTunes]

Hopefully it helps.

Fwiw, don’t forget that Google tends to like human readability and descriptiveness. Whilst page content helps, sensible use of meta tags (keywords, descriptions) and descriptive URLs and alt text for images also seems to give a bit of a boost for a new site.

If you post over in the computer section you may find one of the proper web/SEO geeks has more current insight on any changes google have made to algorithms (every now and again they can be significant).

[Si1295]

The reason, harsh as it may seem, is that Google doesn't see any value in the pages. That's why they are (or were) discovered, not indexed. I'm guessing it's a new site?

You've got 3 options to get them indexed, all of which involve throwing links at them. The first is a bunch of long content blog posts related to the pages e.g "How to prepare your watch for auction", "Easy fixes that will double your watch's value" etc... and put internal links to the appropriate service page. Once they're indexed it will both give your site authority, increasing Google's trust in your site, and tell Google that you value the service page linked to.

The second involves external links (links from other websites pointing to your site). Don't worry about whether they're do follow or no follow at this point. The easy way to go about this is:
1/ Find a bunch of watch forums and sub-forums, like the one here on PH
2/ Create a burner account
3/ Find a thread loosely related to the subject of your page
4/ Post a reply with as much or as little effort as you're willing to exert, just ensure there's a half decent anchor and vary them between forums/replies e.g "sell a watch", "best place to sell a watch". DON'T ADD A LINK JUST YET
5/ Leave it a week/fortnight/month, basically as long as it will take for your post to get lost in the thread or the thread dies.
6/ Log back in and edit your reply with a link to the relevant page using the anchor you put in
7/ Have a bath/shower because what you've just done is filthy

The above is probably the quickest way of getting the pages indexed. I imagine people will be replying to this telling you I don't know what I'm talking about and that you'll be penalised by Google. Is it a shady practice? Yes. Is it against most forum guidelines? Yes. Is it something I regularly do? No. Does it work? Abso-fking-lutely.

Third option (and what I would do) is a combination of the 2 above. Write blog posts with information and advice, internal link to your selling pages, use ropey external link building method to index and give authority to the blog posts.

The reason I recommend the third option is to target high rankings for the informative pages, it will allow you to capture customers early in their watch buying/selling process which will give you the most value (imo). To give a very PH analogy, for high purchase intent keywords, e.g sell a watch, you're in a 1/4mile drag race with the competition. They're 3/4 up the track (current search position) in their Ferrari (quality of website in Google's opinion) using Sunoco race fuel (spending on seo) whilst you're trying to push your Metro off the start line. To win that race you'll need to pay to start inches from the finish line (Google Adwords)

Edited by Si1295 on Sunday 30th October 08:48

[jeremyc]

Si1295 said:

The second involves external links (links from other websites pointing to your site). Don't worry about whether they're do follow or no follow at this point. The easy way to go about this is:
1/ Find a bunch of watch forums and sub-forums, like the one here on PH
2/ Create a burner account
3/ Find a thread loosely related to the subject of your page
4/ Post a reply with as much or as little effort as you're willing to exert, just ensure there's a half decent anchor and vary them between forums/replies e.g "sell a watch", "best place to sell a watch". DON'T ADD A LINK JUST YET
5/ Leave it a week/fortnight/month, basically as long as it will take for your post to get lost in the thread or the thread dies.
6/ Log back in and edit your reply with a link to the relevant page using the anchor you put in
7/ Have a bath/shower because what you've just done is filthy

The above is probably the quickest way of getting the pages indexed. I imagine people will be replying to this telling you I don't know what I'm talking about and that you'll be penalised by Google. Is it a shady practice? Yes. Is it against most forum guidelines? Yes. Is it something I regularly do? No. Does it work? Abso-fking-lutely.

Just don't try this on PistonHeads: it's against the forum rules and will see all your hard work rapidly deleted, and your account(s) - burner and main - banned.

[Si1295]

jeremyc said:

ust don't try this on PistonHeads: it's against the forum rules and will see all your hard work rapidly deleted, and your account(s) - burner and main - banned.

I imagine it's a pain in the backside with a forum this busy

[Redarress]

Just to add to Si idea. It really does work but is very very naughty and as above you will be burned in hell........Forums such as Pistonheads activity search out this kind of abuse and will clear users of not only their main account but also there so called burner accounts. IP address helps Pistonheads keep a track on all accounts you create.

If this is your business you are better off getting relevant high quality content written and blogged regularly with associated page links. The other thing is to make your site Google friendly........Gone are the days of white coloured keywords on a white coloured section of your website pages or keywords filling your pages..

There really is no way for instant page 1 listing unless the keywords are very very very niche. It takes time and constant administration to work your SEO to your advantage and you always stand the risk of Google policy change !

Quite rightly I understand Pistonheads coming down on anyone who employs these kind of tactics to the detriment of the forum.

Also if anyone ever promises you instant page 1 listing on a new website run very fast in the opposite direction.......they are not being truthful

Edited by Redarress on Sunday 30th October 18:59

[DSLiverpool]

University students can be a great source of quality blog articles at reasonable price.

[Si1295]

Redarress said:

Also if anyone ever promises you instant page 1 listing on a new website run very fast in the opposite direction.......they are not being truthful

Edited by Redarress on Sunday 30th October 18:59

The best SEOs don't sell ranking positions, they sell additional revenue and brand awareness

[jm8403]

Si1295 said:

The best SEOs don't sell ranking positions, they sell additional revenue and brand awareness

And how do they achieve that? Surely the biggest benefit for a business is paying a tonne to google to be high in ranking?

[alfabeat]

It is interesting. For my business web site, which isn't particularly well ranked on Google for whatever reasons, I pay some chap a set amount every 6 months to ensure that my web site always displays in the top 4 sponsored positions for 10 set key phrases.

It is a lot of money (for my business) but seems to work and at least is a set amount for budgeting purposes. I have no idea how he does it or if I'm being massively ripped off.

[amidoingthisright]

alfabeat said:

It is interesting. For my business web site, which isn't particularly well ranked on Google for whatever reasons, I pay some chap a set amount every 6 months to ensure that my web site always displays in the top 4 sponsored positions for 10 set key phrases.

It is a lot of money (for my business) but seems to work and at least is a set amount for budgeting purposes. I have no idea how he does it or if I'm being massively ripped off.

Would you be able to drop me a pm with their details please?


Thank you for all the other replies, will read through and respond in the morning.

[LooneyTunes]

alfabeat said:

It is interesting. For my business web site, which isn't particularly well ranked on Google for whatever reasons, I pay some chap a set amount every 6 months to ensure that my web site always displays in the top 4 sponsored positions for 10 set key phrases.

It is a lot of money (for my business) but seems to work and at least is a set amount for budgeting purposes. I have no idea how he does it or if I'm being massively ripped off.

Unless things have changed much, Google’s keyword advertising was largely (possibly exclusively) based on how much you were prepared to pay (I.e. you had to outbid other advertisers, and where competition for keywords was high the price would reflect this). I’d be half tempted to ask him what he’s doing that goes beyond setting a high enough budget and bid limit for each set of keywords. You can DIY keyword advertising with Google and there are probably still tools to help you understand costs/set budgets.

If Google’s approach remains the same, and you’re paying a set amount per month, that would suggest that either the fee your paying this chap is could be quite meaty to ensure it does deliver what you’ve said, or there’s a chance that it might not actually deliver once the money allocated for Google has run out.

Google understand that advertising spend often needs ongoing justification, and that how you allocate budget needs ongoing refinement, (and anyone delivering this sort of service should too) so you should be getting reporting to help you evaluate the extent to which your keyword strategy is hitting the spot (e.g. you are getting traffic from relevant countries, etc and helping you evaluate which of these deliver the conversions/business outcomes you’re after) - if you’re not getting this then ask for it.

[wisbech]

Si1295 said:

The reason I recommend the third option is to target high rankings for the informative pages, it will allow you to capture customers early in their watch buying/selling process which will give you the most value (imo). To give a very PH analogy, for high purchase intent keywords, e.g sell a watch, you're in a 1/4mile drag race with the competition. They're 3/4 up the track (current search position) in their Ferrari (quality of website in Google's opinion) using Sunoco race fuel (spending on seo) whilst you're trying to push your Metro off the start line. To win that race you'll need to pay to start inches from the finish line (Google Adwords)

Edited by Si1295 on Sunday 30th October 08:48

Plus - from the look of it, you are trying to build a marketplace. Which are lucrative and 'sticky', but due to that, large barriers to entry to get to the scale you need, because you need both sides of the market to see you as the go to place. Have you looked at advertising deals with the key watch forums? (that don't already have their own marketplaces)

Watchfinders are owned by Richemont as I sure you know, so that's the scale of the competition

[alfabeat]

LooneyTunes said:

Unless things have changed much, Google’s keyword advertising was largely (possibly exclusively) based on how much you were prepared to pay (I.e. you had to outbid other advertisers, and where competition for keywords was high the price would reflect this). I’d be half tempted to ask him what he’s doing that goes beyond setting a high enough budget and bid limit for each set of keywords. You can DIY keyword advertising with Google and there are probably still tools to help you understand costs/set budgets.

If Google’s approach remains the same, and you’re paying a set amount per month, that would suggest that either the fee your paying this chap is could be quite meaty to ensure it does deliver what you’ve said, or there’s a chance that it might not actually deliver once the money allocated for Google has run out.

Google understand that advertising spend often needs ongoing justification, and that how you allocate budget needs ongoing refinement, (and anyone delivering this sort of service should too) so you should be getting reporting to help you evaluate the extent to which your keyword strategy is hitting the spot (e.g. you are getting traffic from relevant countries, etc and helping you evaluate which of these deliver the conversions/business outcomes you’re after) - if you’re not getting this then ask for it.

I used to do it myself on Google Adwords and spent a small fortune. This service provides me with unlimited impressions/click throughs and guarantees I'm always in the top 4 on page 1 for a set budget. I don't believe he is actively doing the Adwords stuff I used to do - I think there is something else at play, but I don't know what. I do get a monthly report with the number of impressions and click throughs by phrase chosen.

[LooneyTunes]

alfabeat said:

I used to do it myself on Google Adwords and spent a small fortune. This service provides me with unlimited impressions/click throughs and guarantees I'm always in the top 4 on page 1 for a set budget. I don't believe he is actively doing the Adwords stuff I used to do - I think there is something else at play, but I don't know what. I do get a monthly report with the number of impressions and click throughs by phrase chosen.

Intriguing! Does the reporting give you enough to track all the way through to conversion? After all, that's really what counts.

[Si1295]

jm8403 said:

And how do they achieve that? Surely the biggest benefit for a business is paying a tonne to google to be high in ranking?

It's achieved through rankings but the saying is about ensuring the "customers" perspective is correct. I.e. The customer wants to rank high for plumber London when it's easier to rank high for plumber Hammersmith, tap replacement brixton etc... which will bring in jobs faster

PPC/Adwords works well, if you don't rely on Google's automated system, but it's for a different scenario (imo). To add another analogy, PPC is turning a tap on, SEO is digging for a water spring. You don't start digging when you're dying of thirst

Edited by Si1295 on Sunday 13th November 15:17