Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
You can find my site by searching the page "title", but not by ANY of the keywords. The only hits I get from Google are from searching on the actual URL. I don't think it's picking up the keywords or ALT tags.
I've also tried for months and months to get the site listed with DMOZ, but because the site is for used car sales, I think the DMOZ editors have unfairly blocked us out. (A lot of competition in local/regional automotive sales category)
Thanks. Any information you're able to provide will be greatly appreciated.
Brian
Keep it simple. Don't use postbacks, be careful when you use sessions. Don't use too many querystring parameters.
Keep the query strings short, do not use session ID's and you should be fine
Yes, this is why I said be careful with sessions. I belive ASP.NET sometimes uses the querystring to maintain state for browsers that do not support cookies. I'm not sure if it feeds these to googlebot or not.
I got this from the MS site
Support for cookie-free sessions can be configured
This suggests that by default querystring based sessions are diabled. In that case, you're fine using the ASP.Net session object for sessions. You must however ensure that your site is browsable with cookies disabled as otherwise Googlebot won't be able to crawl your site.
Might I suggest that you've only recently been listed on Google? Perhaps from the submit your site link?
There are a couple points I’d like to bring up, recently being in a similar situation myself.
1.You may be fully listed on Google, just not on the particular data-center you are accessing. Give it time for the links to propagate. Have you checked your web logs? Has the GoogleBot visited you?
2.Now this seems to be the kicker: Get links on other sites, they count more than a self-submission! You’re put on a “get round to when you have time” list on a self submission link but a “this must be important” list when you are a link on a high page ranking Google listed page.
Google will get you in time, it just depends when you want, sooner or later…
Do a search on Google for your site just the www_dot_sitename_dot_com bit to see if Google has picked up any site referring to you to get a feel if you should be listed. Don’t do the old “allinurl:” etc. or include http… they are for big fully indexed sites.
If referrers referring to you aren’t yet picked up, its unlikely you’ll be fully listed yet. Give it time. And while your waiting make your site better. Both to users and to search engines. But mostly to users.
Remember you could have a million people check out your home page for 5 seconds from a search engine and go away. That is worse than only 5 people seeing your site and always coming back…
Does that make sense? Or is that vodka a bad bottle?
Something to consider
I get the feeling that the links from AutoTrader.com aren't making any difference.
How does Google know what sites are linking to mine?
When you say to link from similar pages with high ranking... who would do this. Would a advertisement (not a car listing) on AutoTrader do the trick or are we talking industry publications?
Thanks again for all the help! :)
Brian
Your links from Autotrader should help a lot, but I wouldn't buy an advert for google to follow, unless its a permanent advert shown to _every_ user, bit of an expensive way to go. Also perhaps the site doesn't show adverts to the search engine spiders, and then it would be a waste.
Its only just occurred to me... (Slaps head and says: Of course)
Do you have any local directories in your area that you can have your website listed on for free or for little charge? Such as thisisTownName.co.uk or touchTownName.co.uk or something like that I think. Of course make sure they themselves are in Google! And again this is good for users. Though stay away from link farms and such like, google doesn't like them. And more importantly they annoy me :-P
It can take a month or two to be fully listed in google, depending on when you put your site up and when google does its deep crawl. If your URL is listed in google you are likely to be crawled in the next one.
If any of your friends have websites listed in google see if they mind putting a link to you on one of their pages. Do that kind of thing...
I'd stay away from paying for anything that is not for viewers, like adverts etc. Get them for people to see, not for the bots. You won't even be garenteed the bots will see them; they could be inserted by javascript and the bot won't bother running it...
1. I think asp.net uses url session management by default.
No, it uses cookies for session management by default
2. As far as I know, all aspx pages are forms.
No, that is incorrect.
3. I thought google cannot folow javascript links.
You mean "client-side javascript links", either way you'll be wrong. However, client side javascript links are generally a bad idea.
4. I have pages that use one or two parameters in query strings. No problem getting google to index them.
Bully for you. However you understand why people advise against them, don't you?
5. But when you use a datagrid, the session state can get huge.
This is where I fell off my chair laughing. ;-)
I've tried to analyse your points, please read below:
People either go directly to the site, or link to it from listings on sites like AutoTrader.com.
You are correct - these are basically the main two modes of recieving traffic or visitors to a website.
I get the feeling that the links from AutoTrader.com aren't making any difference.
The site: AutoTrader.com is having a PR of 7/10. If your link is published on the Home page of this site then it will be given high importance by the search engines. Incase its published on one of the sub pages then the importance will depend on the importance of the page on which its published.
How does Google know what sites are linking to mine?
Basically when Google's spider i.e. Googlebot crawls the web, it follows links to your website as published on other websites / webpages. And then Google counts these Links as Backlinks to your site. More the backlinks more will be the PR of your site as well as high rankings etc.
When you say to link from similar pages with high ranking... who would do this. Would a advertisement (not a car listing) on AutoTrader do the trick or are we talking industry publications?
Basically its this part where the role of Link Building comes in. Links can be either one way or reciprocal. One way links mean where the other site links to you but you don't reciprocate the link. On the other hand, a reciprocal link means that you're also publishing the link in return of the site which is publishing your link.
It's you yourself who will have to find if you will be doing this yourself or you're going to hire someone having specialised knowledge in this field.
In addition if you wish you can also go for advertisements [free / paid].
I hope this will be of some help to add to your pool of knowledge. Would be happy incase you would like to have more clarifications!
Get Going - Wish you Good Luck...
Vani
--
No, it uses cookies for session management by default
Visual Studio will only let me create aspx pages as forms. I can remove the html form tag, but I've had trouble with something in visual studio conflicting. I was never able to put multiple forms on one page. I haven't used another IDE, so I don't know if that's unique to VS. I guess I could create an html page, change its extension to aspx, and then create a code behind page for it. Just never tried that. I don't know why VS wants all aspx pages to be forms.
You mean "client-side javascript links", either way you'll be wrong. However, client side javascript links are generally a bad idea.
Bully for you. However you understand why people advise against them, don't you?
5. But when you use a datagrid, the session state can get huge.This is where I fell off my chair laughing. ;-)
Well, actually I meant the viewstate gets huge. Is that what's so funny? Or is it something else? Instead of laughing at me, why don't you help me. That's what I'm on the board for.
