3 replies to this topic

[coreywhite]

Hi, everyone. This is my first post here . . . My name is Corey White, and I'm a web designer making the move from strictly amateur to semi-professional. While I'm starting to be fairly confident in my web design abilities, I'm definitely an SEO novice.

I have a quick question -

I've launched a site fairly recently (within the past month). As part of this process, I have conducted what seem to be some pretty basic SEO techniques (keywords in title, keywords in body copy, image-light XHTML markup with CSS for layout/design, etc.). I have also added a page for links, and exchanged reciprocal links with several directories related to my site (primarily directories focusing on Maine web designers).

As a result of this, my rankings in Yahoo and MSN are decent (though far from terrific), and seem to be improving. However, Google is a completely different story. Searching for site:mysitename.com does return my homepage, and searching allinurl:www.mysitename.com actually returns all of the pages in my site, so Google is definitely indexing my site. Now, I know from previous research into SEO that Google has a time delay with new sites in the rankings. So, I'm not expecting any great results from Google, at least for the time being.

But, I'm not clear on how extensive this time delay is, or if it's possible that I'm being penalized for one of the directories I linked to. Here are my two concerns. First, using sites that report Google Pagerank, my site receives a 0. Second, when I search for link:www.coreywhite.com, absolutely no sites are listed as linking to mine. Similarly, when I conduct that search on sites that my site links to, Google does not report that my site links to them.

It's as though Google knows about my site, and will let you find it if you search for it directly . . . but refuses to acknowledge that it is in anyway related to any of the other sites on the internet. Is this normal? If so, about how long can I expect it to last?

Again, my problem isn't low rankings: it's the 0 pagerank and the lack of returns when searching for backlinks.

Thanks so much for your help!

[chrishirst]

welcome Corey

Sounds like standard aging delay symptoms. -
and there is a thread on checking google backlinks here

[Randy]

Right-o. You'll want to check out the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12535]aging delay thread[/url] too Corey.

And welcome !

[Leann_Pass]

Again, my problem isn't low rankings: it's the 0 pagerank and the lack of returns when searching for backlinks.

You are fortunate that you are seeing decent rankings in Yahoo and MSN inside of a month - that is great. It means you are doing things right.

Google is just a hard-headed old man and it takes him a while to get up to speed with things that are new. Give it a good 8 or 9 months before you even worry about really great rankings in G.

As for the back links, well, G is slow about showing those....but it doesn't mean they don't know they are there. They update their back links and PR every once in a while (can be 3 months or so in between updates) but even then it is only a "public display" and does not really mean a thing in terms of rankings. They never give us the real scoop any more. Best to just igore the tool bar and do what you know to do......add content and add relevant links on a regular basis.

G will come around in time if you play your cards right...and it sounds like you are.

Hope that helps,
Leann