Getting in the Google index

Right now, ANY POSITION AT ALL would be nice

[ChrisXenon]

I run an E-commerce business. As we diversify, the range of products gets larger and the focus gets poorer, so we'd like to spawn a number of new sites - each one focussing on a small subset of our products.

We are not making clone sites. Though there is some product overlap, the new sites will sell different products.

We hope this will make it easier to optimise each site for the products it sells, and in addition, we'll have more opportunities to get high in Google's index - when one is down, perhaps another will be up - and we can afford to conduct radical experiements with a site if it is not the only site we can earn from.

All sites will be hosted on our own server (same IP).

So we did this wiht our first new site in early December 2002. But - although we have submitted the new site often, it is not in the index at all.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Chris

[EasyCall]

Get some inbound links to your sites that are indexed in Google and you'll get indexed without even submitting.

[martinibuster]

To get visibility you have to get those inbounds. If applicable, get the ODP listing, definitely spring $300 for Yahoo, submit some urls to inktomi (low-cost way to get into msn),...

Optimizing a web site can take several months before you get it right.

If you need instant position, there's always adwords. If you pick your keywords wisely you can get some great ROI. There is nothing shameful or bad about having to advertise.

I'm not sure about the diverse web sites, as I haven't walked in your shoes so I don't have enough experience to comment on that.

[igloo]

I would be of the opinion that you would be better off with one large site with many optimised pages - making lots of ifferent ones might be hedging your bets a little. Google loves big sites more than it loves lots of little ones.

Also you need lots of links to each one if you go for the multiple sites option, and one site will be much easier to get lots of links to. If you've submitted but not appeared (or just not appeared for good keywords?) incoming links is almost certainly a problem. Get the dmoz listing and listings in any appropriate industry directories and you will start to show up.
Make some keyworded pages an you should start to see traffic, however small the volumes.

[added] Curse my 'D' key![/added]

[WindSun]

"I would be of the opinion that you would be better off with one large site with many optimised pages - making lots of ifferent ones might be hedging your bets a little. Google loves big sites more than it loves lots of little ones..."

What Igloo said.

Better to have good traffic on one site than try to boost crummy traffic on several small ones. Cross selling is also much easier if all on one site.

[igloo]

You could break up the separate content you were going to use into logical subdirectories of your site - if the content is unique enough I think you might even be able to get a dmoz or other directory listing for each one.

[ChrisXenon]

Thanks for all your comments.

I don't think the magic bullet is in there, but I will work on the OH SO TEDIOUS reciprocal links thing, and keep submitting.

Thanks, guys.

Chris