Optimizing for Google

http redirect, many pages, robots.txt

[flex55]

Hi everyone!
After lots of work, I've finished developing my site and have put it out there.
I thought I'm ready to "Google it up", but the more I read about it, the more I realize that only now does the "real work" begin. And it requires so much effort and hard work!
I read a lot (btw, this site is *amazing* in the amount of info it has!), and I still have a couple of question I hope you guys can help with:
(1) my site redirects from [mysite.com...] and from [mysite.com...] to [mysite.com...] I've heard that Google may not like the .jsp file at the end, or may not like the auto redirects (both of them). Is that true?

(2) Many described that one should strive to have as many pages as possible indexed by Google. However, my site is pretty simple in its layout- just under 10 pages, with lots of dynamic work at the background. Do you think I should really start to create more and more pages to make the site "fatter"?

(3) I dont have any robots.txt file as there're no special instructions I have in mind for the robots. Is that really bad?

Thanks all!

f55.

[socks]

Robots.txt is used to mark areas of your site "out of bounds" to the robots. It's not to tell them where to go. They will follow your links like a human does.

One of the reasons our site does so well in googe (over 700 unique searches to find our site from google this month) is that we have quite a few pages, and they're all being indexed. You'll really have to target some keywords with only 10 pages. Whereas our site we don't target keywords at all, it just happens in the course of us making a quality website for our users.

Hope this helps,

Socks

[ciml]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], f55.

I agree with Socks, many pages each built around different content can help to attract many users.

If you get a high PageRank then you might be OK with the redirect, but I would prefer not to take the risk. Google sometimes merges links to both addresses when one redirects to the other, bot not always.

[AkanDian rain]

If you are looking to "bulk up" your site there are a lot of creative things you can do.

- Post newsletters which are also good for targetd email marketing

- Describe processes related to your product/service (i.e., this is how a widget is made)

- Have product reviews, or featured products

- Do spotlights on employees/partners that made a difference in your industry

- etc.

The point is to think about all the possible information related to your Web site that may be of interested to someone. Is this take a lot of time? Sure, but you probably don't have anything else to do on the weekends :)