Forum Moderators: buckworks
My site is finally listed in Google. My question is about the frequency of updating pages so they are listed in a timely manner. My products are seasonal in nature and I plan to introduce new products weekly. Currently I don't have a database for products - I create a page for each new product.
I've just published new pages related to my Valentine product line. Something tells me that these may be too late to show up in any type of related search. Should I update my site with St. Patrick's Day products NOW in order to be listed in March?
Today I noticed in WWW2 and WWW3 Google that the description for my site is about my deadline for taking orders for my Christmas product line!
Can someone explain how this cycle works?
Thanks!
give google about one month between indexing and then displaying as results. if it's a new page, this will only take 2 days, this is my own experience.
if you've got a shop located in the us, what's about froogle for you? i think this will be most in time.
End of January would actually have been better, because that would have given an extra cycle to improve positioning if it's a new page. Given that premise, it's not a bad idea to get started for the late February/early March crawl for Father's Day, weddings and graduations in June. It's a month early, but it gives that extra chance to tweak a bit.
If you want to sell items over the web, and have a specific target date, I personally would want those pages up a minimum of 3 months prior to target. That gives you time to test the new pages on your existing traffic (assuming you have some - brand new sites are at a disadvantage, of course), because there's nothing like a little field testing to throw up the "does it...?" errors. You should also have a max of around 4 weeks out of the main Google database (for those with existing sites, freshbot traffic should fill the gap, of course)
If you're *really* lucky, you'll get spidered and included in other SE updates, too. You now have at least 2 months to bring in punters, including (hopefully) at least one full Google update to put up the tweaks. On the whole, you may well find that sales peak a bit earlier in the online sales environment (people aren't so trusting that web sites can fulfill orders quickly. There are some notable exceptions, Amazon have a good rep for example). Marcias post is a good example of how to do the working out for timings.
>> Should I update my site with St. Patrick's Day products NOW in order to be listed in March?
Yup. Before Christmas would have been prferable, but that can't be helped now
>> Currently I don't have a database for products - I create a page for each new product.
That approach should help freshbot find/index your new stuff. Long-term, can you afford to carry on in that way? For a very low number of products, probably you can, but once you start publishing tens or hundreds of products, a database is the way to go. It need not necessarily hurt your rankings either, there are ways and means of getting d/base generated pages spidered
Palmpal
My "index page" has links to my product line pages. These "product line pages" have links for my product categories. Each "product category page" has thumbnails of my individual products. Each "product page" has a larger graphic and the purchasing information, etc.
One of the categories I have is "Holidays." On each product page I had the product name/title - For example "Pocket Photo Album - Season's Greetings." I've changed this title to say "Christmas Photo Album - Season's Greetings." I've changed my page title, and alt tags to reflect this. By adding in the specific holiday name to describe the product these names may be picked up on a Google search.
My index page can still include a graphic to honor the current holiday and links to holiday specials. My product pages would then have the specific holiday names incorporated. I just need to get busy and add some products for future holidays!
If anyone else would care to share their method I'd be interested in learning more. Thanks.
