sitemaps

[Bhujang]

Hello

I was wondering if someone explain to me how google submits pages from a site map. My site map is currently 277 pages which I submit but google only indexes186 of them. Is there a reason that google misses the others out? Is it becaise the sellerdeck software is not seo optimised enough still?

I use version 12.

thanks in advance

Bhu

[Southwest Test]

You're not alone, Rondie... Most of us suffer from this phenomenon... Google has very much a mind of its own and keeps changing the goalposts in many areas.

There's an excellent article on this issue, here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-indexation-cap

[Mike Hughes]

The usual case is that Google knows the pages are there. It just doesn't think they're worthy of being included in the index.

You need to have a decent amount of unique content on each page and make sure you have plenty of links to your site. Use unique page headers and meta description for every page. Also don't bury pages deep in the site (ie lots of hops / links away from the home page) including the sellerdeck sitemap on your website helps with this aspect.

For more specific advice give us a link to your website.

Mike

[Bhujang]

You're not alone, Rondie... Most of us suffer from this phenomenon... Google has very much a mind of its own and keeps changing the goalposts in many areas.

There's an excellent article on this issue, here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-indexation-cap

+1 on this info. I always wondered why I always had just the 186 indexed no matter how much my sit ehas grown over the years! Now its clear! My site is index capped to this figure!

[AdieB]

SEO advice

The usual case is that Google knows the pages are there. It just doesn't think they're worthy of being included in the index.

You need to have a decent amount of unique content on each page and make sure you have plenty of links to your site. Use unique page headers and meta description for every page. Also don't bury pages deep in the site (ie lots of hops / links away from the home page) including the sellerdeck sitemap on your website helps with this aspect.

For more specific advice give us a link to your website.

Mike

I was wondering if anyone had any SEO suggestions for our new courier and car-carrier e-commerce site. Currently we are spending a fortune using Google Adwords and would now want to start getting some real hits witht having to pay for them. Any suggestions greatly appreciated. My SEO knowledge is very grey...........
The site is http://www.ic-express.co.za

[Mike Hughes]

I think you have a busy time in front of you.

In a nutshell, in order to make the site work you must:

1. Get relevant visitors to the site
2. Tell them what you do.
3. Give them enough information so they can decide if they want to do business with you.
4. Make it easy for them to take action.

I suspect all these areas could do with a bit of tuning.

SEO is mostly about the first part, getting the right traffic to your site. Your key focus here should be:

1. Work out what the right keywords are
2. Create a page for each important one. Include the main keywords in the page name and the title and put some decent content on the page so the search engines can see it's really about what it says it is.
3. Use the keywords in the anchor text that links to the page. This usually happens automatically with Actinic if your sections and products are properly named.
4. Get some links from external websites. Join in the discussion on relevant forums, create a facebook page, publish a few videos on youtube, etc.

Sign up for Google webmaster tools and register the website. This will show you what external links you have, which searches are bringing you traffic, how many pages are indexed, as well indicate any problems they might be seeing.

Lastly, don't use large rotating images on the website. All they do is slow things down and rarely, if ever, add anything of value. (if in doubt go back to the list of things your website has to achieve and see where they fit in).

Mike