42 replies to this topic

[torka]

Shouldn't in that case Google see/report for every site at least as many links as the pages of the site (assuming that the global and section navigation links are visible to Google - as is the case with this site - text links - lynx tested)?

Maybe they should, but fact is they don't. Their "link:" function hasn't worked to show all the links they know about for any given page for, oh, better than a year now. It basically appears to be a random sample, and the criteria for what links they choose to show are not consistent from one page to the next. If you're using Google's link: command to check inbound links to your or any competitor's pages, stop. It won't work.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable way I'm aware of to tell for sure what links Google knows about (or counts toward the rankings) for any given page.

--Torka

[Jill]

but I can not say it has been overly popular); hence I am not expecting to see links start developing on their own any time soon sad.gif.

That leaves us with directories and press releases.

Are you SURE you read the articles? Don't think they were all about developing links on their own either.

There really are a lot of creative ideas in the Link Building Articles. Something might strike a chord with you if you read them. But yeah, they're not a quick fix, so if that's what you're after you can continue with your directories and recips, just don't expect much out of them.

[Jupiter]

I think you misunderstood me Jill. All I am saying is that this is not (nor does it have the potential to be), the “authority” type of site that will offer loads of unique content attracting a myriad of links. This is a light shopping site (amongst an ocean of similar sites), with the sole purpose of selling women’s apparel as previously stated.

It is the product that limits the possibilities. I was involved in optimising a similar shop selling professional electronic equipment not too long ago. Totally different story. Still strictly a shopping site with limited content, but there is a lot more you can say about such products, and a lot more places to get links from (manufacturers, magazines, product reviews, enthusiast community, etc).

In this case, however, the product is generic so we don’t have links from manufacturers, there are no product reviews (in the sense of detailed product performance reviews that people search for), etc.

Hence my resistance to trying to develop unique content for the site, which in turn is the reason why I do not expect sites to start linking to it on their own (I have no incentive to offer other than the product itself, and I can not say this is unique).
Instead I am trying to get links from “the business community I exist in”, and since this is such a competitive arena the only options I can see are paid links and reciprocals (by which I mean links from specialised regional shopping directories that require either a reciprocal link or payment in order to list the site).

It might be that I don’t know the industry very well. Believe me I am (and will keep on) trying to find sites with some sort of connection (or complementary), with which I could exchange links, but I am having a bit of a trouble finding any (other than directories).

I have read the articles you pointed out, and a few more, and know only too well that content is king (or queen if you prefer); however, as I explained above the content building approach is just not practical in this instance. The site is very well designed with usability/accessibility principles in mind and offers a good selection of products, it’s just not unique.

I don’t think I missed any of the creative ideas mentioned in the articles, I just don’t think that most of them are applicable in this case. Do I need new spectacles?


Torka, I think I get it now, thanks for the explanation

[Jill]

So Jupiter, tell me why anyone would want to buy from your site as opposed to those thousands just like it? Is there any reason?

If not, it's hard to imagine why it actually should show up relatively high in the search engines, don't you think?

Think about it from the engine's point of view. They want to show a representive sampling of the different sorts of sites for the search query at hand. Say one with the cheapest prices, one with the best selection, one with the best customer service, etc.

If your is just the same old same old that they're basically already listing, there's really no reason for them to take notice.

That's your job (or the site owner's) -- to find that unique selling proposition and play it up to the hilt. If you don't have one, make one. If you can't think of one, then hang it up now or start to pay some big bucks to just advertise and hope that people don't care that you're just the same as everyone else.

[Michael Martinez]

Directories and press releases are not going to save a site no one wants to link to.

[Jupiter]

So Jupiter, tell me why anyone would want to buy from your site as opposed to those thousands just like it? Is there any reason?

Because I offer an aesthetically appealing, fast, easily navigable and accessible site, good prices and a selection of garments and accessories in a particular style (and I am definitely not the only one doing that).



Don’t get me wrong, I understand what you are saying, and agree with all of it. For that reason I don’t want to get too defensive, and I won’t. I will just say that you got it right.

As far as the search engines are concerned I thought that they were supposed to show everything (well, almost, at least the decent ones), that is available out there and put the ones they deem more important at the top of the list. My problem at the moment is not being IN the list, not at the top of it.

[Dave]

So your pages get spidered, but Google only has supplemental listings for your pages, right?

So if you've ruled out any duplicate content issues (as I mentioned in my previous post it will most probably be down to either an ageing delay or Google just not thinking you're important enough to worry about.

So I guess you'll have to wait, but you can spend that time coming up with some unique value propositions and using these to get links - that way your business will stand out in the real world and the Search Engines. Surely there's an additional service or two you can offer, other than selling products..?

(BTW, I've never seen Google update the cache for a supplemental listing. It will update your cache when you get a full listing.)

[Jill]

As far as the search engines are concerned I thought that they were supposed to show everything (well, almost, at least the decent ones), that is available out there and put the ones they deem more important at the top of the list.

Exactly.

So you have to figure out how your can be more important, otherwise it shouldn't be at the top of the list.

You can't fake importance. (Well you can, but that's another story, and one which we don't advocate on this forum.)

[Jupiter]

So if you've ruled out any duplicate content issues

I would really appreciate your opinion on the duplicate issue.

Google can see c1150 pages from the site (all apart from the homepage in the supplemental index). Those come up for site:siteur…

If I search for site:www.siteur… Google can see just the homepage and that is placed in the normal index (last updated 12 Feb).

For the supplemental listings I wondered why there were that many pages in Google’s index (since adding all product, review, category and static pages was way short of 1200), so I copied all the SERPs (100 at a time), pasted them in a Word doc and run some searches.

I discovered that Google has cached every product once (c230), every pop-up picture for each product (the ones that pop up when the "click to enlarge" link is pressed - another 230), a review for each product (another 230), all the static and category pages and a few “products_new” pages. Adding those up comes to roughly 750 pages, so there are roughly another 500 pages that Google can see and that I can not account for.

Now those “products_new” pages come from the New Products category which currently contains the entire product range (c230). Once the user clicks on a product the product page loads up. However, I noticed that there is a slight difference here:

Here is how the url of product 167 looks if the user follows the normal path to get to the product page (i.e. category --> sub category --> product): siteurl/product_info.php?cPath=24_27&products_id=167 (lets name this page 167A)

And here is how the url of product 167 looks if the user gets to the product page via the New Products category (i.e. New Products --> product): siteurl/product_info.php?products_id=167 (lets name this page 167B)

Those pages are identical in everything but the url (one contains “cPath=##_##&” – where #=number - the other one doesn’t). Could these be considered duplicates?

The same issue is present with the review pages. If the user clicks on the review link from page 167A he is directed to page: siteurl/product_reviews.php?cPath=24_27&products_id=167

If the user clicks on the review link from page 167B he (or she) is directed to page siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id=167

Again those pages are identical everything but the url (one contains “cPath=##_##&” – where #=number - the other one doesn’t).

Now these findings mean that since each product and review are counted twice I can now account for the extra 500 pages.

This seems like a duplicate issue; however, I looked at another oscommerce site where the same issue is present, but there are no problems with rankings/inclusion.

What is your opinion on the matter?

Do you think I could prevent Google from indexing the duplicate pages with a robots.txt file containing a disallow: siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id
siteurl/product_info.php?products_id
command (notice that “=167” is missing from those urls)?

Would it work like that, or would I have to list all the pages including the number (i.e. disallow:
siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id=167
siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id=168
siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id=169
…)?

If that would work I would probably block popup images in the same way.

Directories and press releases are not going to save a site no one wants to link to.

All I want the directories for at the moment is to get the site into Google. I will be looking for links elsewhere in the future. However, I am a bit confused with what has been posted here regarding directories. Every link building guide I have read (several from this site), mention directories (there are even guides on how to find niche directories and directories providing free links).

Are you saying that directories are not important (at all) nowadays and that no one should bother?

I mentioned (and insisted upon), directories for a start. I mentioned paid for and reciprocal links from directories since I already tried getting free links with meagre results.

I also noticed that a lot of directories nowadays mask the links they provide (link not showing at the bottom of the browser on mouse over, or link showing like: directory/various_stuff_here/as_seen_on_screen.htm). Do such links count at all?

Please accept my apologies for the length of this post.

[Jill]

Do you think I could prevent Google from indexing the duplicate pages with a robots.txt file containing a disallow: siteurl/product_reviews.php?products_id
siteurl/product_info.php?products_id
command (notice that “=167” is missing from those urls)?

Yes, if I'm understanding you correctly, that should work in your robots.txt file. You might want to browse our robots.txt forum to be sure you're doing it correctly.

[Randy]

Let's start off by breaking an assumption you may have.

There is no duplicate content penalty!

Your pages don't get dinged simply because the same page can be reached by more than one path. Instead, the engines will simply decide which version to show in their index. Can this leave you with a lot of supplemental pages? Yes. Does it hurt your ranking for the page that does show up? No.

Now, you could always exclude the spiders from extra versions of those pages if you wanted. It's not going to make any difference in your rankings, but it should eventually cause the supplementals to drop from the indices.

My sense is that you're spending a lot of time and effort worrying about something that isn't worth worrying about.

[Dave]

This is sounding more and more like an issue I have experienced myself.

Those pages are identical in everything but the url (one contains “cPath=##_##&” – where #=number - the other one doesn’t). Could these be considered duplicates?

Yes. But I don't know if this actually harms you. You'll see a lot of similar pages in the supplemental index.

I dealt with this by having a primary category for each product. Every spiderable product link anywhere in the website (sitemap, xml sitemap, cross links, navigation, etc) linked to the product in it's primary category only.

I still had products in more than one category and still had a new products category - these are good for real users. But they confuse search engines so I made sure those links were not followed and those pages not indexed.

The new products category should never be the primary category for a product.

This was a fairly major project, so I got rid of "id" in all of my links at the same time. There are various ways to achieve this (I used url rewriting but that may not be the best option for you) and I found lots of advice in the technology and coding section of this forum.

As I've said - this worked for me, but I was fairly desperate to try all of this. I would rule out the ageing delay and build a few links first! Much less work... it could easily have been time that healed my wounds!

[Jill]

Now, you could always exclude the spiders from extra versions of those pages if you wanted. It's not going to make any difference in your rankings, but it should eventually cause the supplementals to drop from the indices.

I think it's good practice to exclude them. Otherwise the spiders can end up stuck on your site in an endless loop and all that. Plus, you want to direct them to the one exact URL for any one piece of content.

It can cause some messes if you allow them to index the same info on multiple URLs, and it's worth trying to exclude certain ones if you can, imo.

[Dave]

It also helps with your linking. People link to the pages they find. 3 links to one version of a page is better than 1 link each to 3 different urls (all showing the same content).

[Jupiter]

Now, you could always exclude the spiders from extra versions of those pages if you wanted. It's not going to make any difference in your rankings, but it should eventually cause the supplementals to drop from the indices.

That is what I suspected. I will go for this since creating a robots.txt file to do that should not take that long.

My sense is that you're spending a lot of time and effort worrying about something that isn't worth worrying about.

I do sincerely hope you are right.

I would rule out the ageing delay and build a few links first!

That’s exactly what I am planning to do whilst waiting for the ageing delay to drop out of the equation (site has been online for just under 7 months so that’s just a few more moths).

Thank you all for your advice, I now have an action plan .

Off to the robots forum…