Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
i'm finally out of the 'sandbox' with my 12 month old site and have started to see some decent placement for my site in the last few days.
I noticed via a site:mysite.com search has shown that about 70 pages out of 1200 have been indexed. Most of my pages have the same description, just different titles and meta descriptions (ecommerce site selling similar custom products).
I want to get google sitemaps going to index the entire site, but don't want to blow my new found standing. So my question is, is having different titles and meta tags only (and same descriptions on my product pages) enough to keep G satisfied?
thx
I would suggest you to have different title's and description of each page compared with the content of each page and what each page is all about and the kw's you are targeting page wise
How did you get out? Did you have to make a request or did it happen by itself?
They always did matter - if you have them, and the search term is included, they'll be served up in the serps, rather than a snippet of text surrounding the term.
But some have reported that pages with no meta desc are not being listed, and those with identical metas may become supplementals.
on the bigger question of duplicate content, remeber that Google looks at your entire source code - so on a page with lots of shared content, images, ads, and internal navigation, a product description alone may not be enough to mark the page as 'unique'. For Google, you might do better if you add additional text, or maybe group a set of products tgether.
Either way, I don't think the meta/title issues will pose any risk to those pages already listed - but may get you some more. A Google sitemap is always a good idea.
sid- time in sandbox is hard to determine as i never submitted the url to google. url registered jan 2005, site was semi-functional by july 2005, started building links last fall (whenever i got a link from another site i would submit that) and now june 2006 i'm on page one up from page 9 literally overnight (still bouncing around a lot). so i'd say 8-10 months or so since they knew i was out there.
As for meta tags, title tags and description tags, i have them all different for each individual page, even though they are different by only one word. I'll add some more text to each individual product page then before i submit the google sitemap. seems to be the way to go. ugh what a lot of work! i thought i was done with this monster of a site. 1 guy for 1200 product pages.
Quadrille- what is meant by grouping a set of products together? maybe that will save me some time.
My site has been in operation for many years, and now our company is offering a drop ship program for other site owners.
If the other site owners simply copy and paste our product descriptions... will this in effect hurt either of us as far as ranking go's?
Shouldn't affect me, should it? After all... I had the content first....
Also, does it really pay to have a seperate page for every color of widget? Technically speaking, this seems like nothing more than a loophole in the search algo. Why should person 'A' rank better than 'B', when the only thing different is 'B' has all the same product on one page?
On a site:domain.com search, many sites that have the same meta description on every page only get about 2% of their pages listed, before hitting the "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." message.
If the other site owners simply copy and paste our product descriptions... will this in effect hurt either of us as far as ranking go's? ... Shouldn't affect me, should it? After all... I had the content first...It could affect one or other, but it is unlikely, unless they use a similar page template; some 'same copy' on the page isn't a problem, as Google looks at the total code for the page. However, if you are using a template system for affiliates, there is a very real risk of problems for all but one - and being first does not come into it.
Also, does it really pay to have a seperate page for every color of widget? Technically speaking, this seems like nothing more than a loophole in the search algo. Why should person 'A' rank better than 'B', when the only thing different is 'B' has all the same product on one page?I wouldn't put it quite like that - some site designs mean one per page, whether it's 20 words or 2000; and a wood screw needs less description than a ford pick-up. Not my idea of site design, but many off-the-shelf systems seem to work like that. So machine-made site A (one product, 20 words), would likely rank worse than site B (20 products, 1000 words).
On the other hand, if site A used 2000 carefully crafted words to describe a size 8 would screw, it might rank the better - but bore its human visitors to death :)
I'm necessarily generalizing here, but I hope I'm clear on the broad picture?
So, since I have several unique items, but very different finishes for each item, then I should be ok if I put Item type 1 (and all it's finishes) on one single page?
I could also possibly rank better than someone selling the exact same things, that have a separate page for each item?
I totaly agree. But I think, in reference to current seprs that google is not able to detect Duplicate Content on different domains with different IPs. So there are many Dup Cont pages in serps today.
IMO you will rank better the less same navigation and less same overhead is on your page. So you can find product pages with only little navigation and no overhead but just only widget description that rank very well although they have low pagerank. googles new way is low content with low userfriendly pages.
Putting several related items on the same page is good (green widgets various sizes); but if you have widgets, thingies and thingameebobs, then optimizing one page for all three is unlikely to beat a specialist page.
that is what I mean. If you have a page with 10 word widget descrition and 3 link navigation and PR5 and a high quality page with a disquisition about widget with 200 words high navigation ( 20-30 links ) and same PR5 then the first apge will do better on google although the second page is the better on.
I think its a kind of google measuring of keyword/on page word count rate. If it is very high the page will rank very high.
Anyways,
Concerning the point of content vs. relevence - Under one of my search terms, there is a certain person listed at #2. And tho their product CAN be related to my product, it is in no way the actual product. The page in question, just blathers on aimlessly... and i mean aimlessly.
So in a case like this, can I report that to google? I mean, they have a right to come up in the search for that term, but not nearly as high as several other options out there.
As a side note... as far as my search term go's, it seems like google is returning lots of odd results. Almost like, they want to give me a 'mix' of variations on the search term. Is this what their aiming for now?
I'm just saying that I don't feel the search result is very accurate to include that person in the top ten for that keyword.
On the other hand... the reality is, how can anyone really program for something like that.
I guess the reality is, there is nothing I can do.
If you are allude to a spam report you can forget it, cause it will not help. google does not act on these reports but i think they will try to make their algo "better" with that reports.
I'm just saying that I don't feel the search result is very accurate to include that person in the top ten for that keyword. On the other hand... the reality is, how can anyone really program for something like that.
When all said'n'done, the best way to success is build the best site you can, cross your fingers, and leave most of it to Google. It's always good to know what the opposition is doing, but no gains in obsessing about it :)
