Google Search woes

[Stereo Steve]

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...t=xml+sitemaps

[Darren B]

LOL Darren
I have no idea what you just said!

And you think i have

[Darren B]

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...t=xml+sitemaps

yep that be the one

[Stereo Steve]

A sitemap is like an AK47. Very powerful if used correctly but most are more likely to blow their foot off.

[leviathan]

Guy's,

I wish I had half of your knowledge! Really interesting views and most valuable. It seems I have found myself between a rock and a hard place! My customers comment on how much they like the site - that it is clear, easy to navigate and they can find what they want really easily!

Once they manage to find the site, everything seems to be ok! If a collector does not know about my site and they try a google search, we tend to come nowhere! The way I have set up the store, I don't know if individual pages for each product would work (and I am not sure I would know how to change it anyway).

So, the question seems to be 'do I drive the main website name awareness and hope the store format is a hit with my customers (knowing I might miss the casual googler), or do I look to increase this exposure, at the risk of altering the site functionality'?

And to think.....I used to be indecisive!


Thank you very much for your comments.



MJC

[Stereo Steve]

Michael,

If your customers like the site the I wouldn't change much. You have good, unique content. Here's my take on it from personal and bitter experience.

Un-compress your code in Actinic.
Bin the XML sitemap altogether.
Make sure your site is on a UK server and not a shared IP with a thousand porn and scam sites.
Continue to build good text content and work on some decent inbound links.
Make sure your internal linking is good, study this.
Build and honest site which works for the customers you have. Build text content and try to cultivate links in.
Don't partake in link marketing, dodgy SEO or anything similar.

Please feel free to ignore any or all of the above.

[leviathan]

Cheers Stereo!

I really wish I knew how to do all that stuff - I am determined to find out though!

Thanks for your most constructive advice!



Best wishes



MJC

[Darren B]

this site is will give you some ideas http://www.myipneighbors.com/

Im guessing 1and1 is your host

[leviathan]

Darren B,

Thank you very much for your help!

If you ever need to know anything about Spitfires!



Best wishes



MJC

[Mike Hughes]

Sheesh. Sometimes you guys make the simplest thing complicated.

Actinic creates its own sitemap page that links to to all the pages on your website and makes it easier for the search engines to find those pages. All you need to do is tell actinic to do it and make sure there's a link to your sitemap on the home page.

This is all done from within actinic but the details on how to do it depend on which version of actinic you have. Try searching for 'sitemap' in the help files.

Mike

[RuralWeb]

Note. It's google sitemaps I have been talking about as they are completely different to an actinic sitemap and as mike says an actinic sitemap is easily generated and is a must for any site.