Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have setup a webmaster central account and submitted a sitemap - no penalties showing off the account however. Could it be sandboxed? Could it be a 950 penalty for some reason? No black hat tactics, although we did boost the links by adding around 75 or so free directory listings. Like I say, just about every phrase is doing well except the main brand/domain name. Any ideas how to get out of this?
Thanks guys!
I'm not clear about what search results you are looking at. Do you mean:
1. the search on the character string "www.my-domain.co.za" does not return the domain at all
2. the search for "site:www.my-domain.co.za" does not show the domain root?
Two months is definitely within the so-called "sandbox" period, but that would affect competitive keyword searches, not domain name searches or site: operator searches.
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. Basically the main brand/company name (which is also the domain name but hyphenated) does not come up in the top 1000 results. All other phrases are doing well however. A search for the www.my-domain.co.za brings up results but a search for "my domain" brings up nothing. Wierd!
Hope thats clearer!
...but a search for "my domain" brings up nothing.
Is "my domain" a competitive phrase?
Even if it was a competitive issue, normally it would still show but just further down the serps. This is not showing at all (results go from 1 to 861 and stop there). There are many other sites making use of the phrase with lower density (although we never went overboard on density) and they are showing....? Makes me think there is some form of trust issue or penalty at play.
[edited by: Durbanite at 7:57 am (utc) on Jan. 3, 2008]
...site was first cached in early December.
So, give or take a few weeks, you've only been building trust for a month. That's very young for trust to be established on Google.
Are you talking about ranking on Google's main .com index as seen in the US? If so, I don't know whether the co.za domain is affecting you. Where is it hosted? Where are your links from? How old are most of your links? Have you built them too fast? Are they site-wides? Etc.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:08 am (utc) on Jan. 3, 2008]
We built around 75 inbounds off the home page but Google Webmaster Central doesn't actually reflect any of them yet. They are mostly directory links some local (South Africa) some international (some high quality, some not so high) but useful for this type of product.
The site is hosted in Bristol in the UK and search is based on both .com and .co.za search on Google. Majority of our SA based sites end in .co.za and I have never experienced this before. We design websites so many of the sites we submit are brand new but this one takes the cake.
Do you think we should go about removing the directory links? How would you do this? And why is it just our brand phrase that's being affected?
I figured a trust issue too but then wondered why every other phrase comes up?
Some phrases require more trust than other phrases do.
Many phrases are uncompetitive enough that they can rank almost purely by onpage optimization. Others need help from inbound links. Others need help from good inbound links.
Increasingly also, I've observed, Google is looking at link source localization... and links that help you rank on one query may not help you rank on another.
Do you think we should go about removing the directory links?
No, but you will need more links of other types to establish real trust with Google. A backlink profile needs to be well rounded, and free directory links are not the kind of thing that Google sees as an "independent vote" for your domain.
If you are already ranking well on many phrases, that's a GOOD sign. Don't take drastic steps this early in the game, you might make things much worse when you're off to a decent start.
