1st on google now not even top 50 pages

[bhutastuta]

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Ok

Here's a weird one. I have launched a new site (mid/late august) and it ranked top for auto cashback mobiles for about two days (the day before and the day before that). Now it isn't even in the top 50 pages for that search term. Could it be that I set the preference to show www. in front of my site name?

I only really have one quality link pointing to my site but that has pretty much been the case before my site was even indexed into google.

Mind you when I used google tools to submit a sitemap I submitted it for Auto Cash Back Mobiles so for a long time it kept telling me that my site hasn't been indexed none of my pages are in google's index and so on.

But then I realised google was indexing my site without the www so I added that to my list of websites and started searching using keywords that I thought and would like to be found after being searched in google.

I was 1st for auto cashback mobiles and was on the first and 2nd pages for many keywords and phrases, but now I can't even find my own site in google unless I type in exactly what my domain is.

Any ideas guys as to why this might have happened?

[Top banana]

Google often puts a new sites high up the rankings for a while so it can collect user data, e.g. time spend on the site, whether people leave immediately, etc. This helps it decide whether the site offers a good customer experience, or not. Even if it does decided that it offers a good customer, it can't leave the site at the top becuase it is lacking links, or other factors.

So basically google was collected data and now your site has returned to a more suitable position.

Also i would get rid of all the link at the bottom, looks very spammy! What have got to do with mobile phones? Why are those links there?

Search Engine Optimisation • Mobile Phones • Mountain Bikes • Perfume • Fishing Equipment • Watches • Kids Toys • Football Kits • Golf Irons • Exercise Equipment • Sunglasses

[gadget]

Yea I agree, Google often puts new sites at the top then drops them for 2/3 weeks. In that time just add a few relevant backlinks and you'll slowly move back up the rankings.

[bhutastuta]

Ah I see.

The links are there at the bottom because I'm using the affilistore script. If I get rid of them the site won't work unless I pay a certain amount to have them removed.

I guess it's link building time. Only if the mobile phone sites out there replied to their reciprocal link building tool :td

Thanks for clearing this up for me

[bhutastuta]

One other thing I noticed was that the day google dropped my site down all the way down from the top, was that in google's webmaster tools thing I was shown an error whereby the googlebot was restricted access to one of the URLs "URL restricted by robots.txt"

Could this be a reason why google suddenly dropped the website other than it being new and so on.

Thing is the link is to a script which then redirects the customer with my affiliate link to the product page of the merchant. If the script already restricted robots from accessing the link then surely it's not a good idea enabling it. Am I right?

What do you guys think?

[fizzbird]

Could this be a reason why google suddenly dropped the website other than it being new and so on.

No, it's a coincidence.

[bhutastuta]

Ok I should have known that:blush

[Barry]

In my experience and opinion the first few months of any site are the important ones that determine how your site will appear in the serps on a long term basis.

If I make a new site I start off with a few pages then keep an eye on when googlebot visits. As soon as googlebot visits you should add more content immediately to the front page of the site and add a few more pages, then over the next few days keep adding content everyday even if its just a few changes here and there.

Google tends to like new sites and lists them in the serps in a generous position, but google learns quick. Are you updating? Is the content found elsewhere on the web (duplicate content)? Are you backlinks increasing steadily and coming from 'authoritative' sites?

I can see from searching that alot of your pages have gone to 'supplemental' results. This to me means duplicate content. Your website will be seen as a 'thin' affiliate site if you have more pages in supplemental than in the index as unique.

I would start off small, writing unique content for every mobile and every page. Its a pain and take alot of work. Remember if you take 20 minutes to write a review for a phone you'll only have to sell one and thats £30 odd quid.

Think about what people will search for and you'll find some gem phrases out there - go for long tail stuff. Thinking off the top of my head:-

I have a N95 nokia that was free on orange. If I wanted to search for that phone for free like I did I would search google for 'N95 free contract'

ie my main criteria for is I want and 'N95' then I want it 'free' then I want it on 'contract'

If I search google in quotes for 'N95 free contract' there are only 7 results and only one has that phrase in the title (the most important tag!)

Even without the quotes there is only 150,000 results.

In my opinion that would be a phrase I would try to make a page round. I may only get 50 people searching for it a year but if the result was top you'd get a bit of traffic and that traffic you may sell a contract phone.

If you find the phrase works then do it for other models. And keep a close eye on your logs at look at what people are searching for to find your site and use your logs to develop new keyword phrases.

Ta

Baz

[bhutastuta]

Hi Baz

Thanks for your reply.

As far as I know my site is unique and has unique content. I add something to the news/blog everyday or so and this also shows up on my homepage. It is either something I have written myself or I have grabbed it from my whitelabel site and modified it slightly.

Since I'm using a script made by someone else it is nearly impossible for me to write a review or something similar for each and every phone. However I can write a review as a customer for each make. I did give this a go thinking it will only come up for a particular model but it came up for the make instead. So will give that a go.

Links are building slowly and I have been banging my head to get links back from relevant mobile phone sites. So far I have about 4/5 links to my site and are all from mobile phone sites. I still have more to come so I say yes the link backs are building slowly.

I have seen two other sites that pretty much have the same layout as my site: thefone4u.co.uk and tvmobileshop.co.uk, now I don't know to what extent this affects the serps of my site but I'm hoping it's not too much as it looks to me as if those sites haven't been updated for a long time.

I have also been submitting a sitemap everytime my feed is updated or anything to do with my site is updated which is a few times a day.

Now unless google sees autocashbackmobiles.co.uk and www.autocashbacmobiles.co.uk as two separate sites then I can't really say I have duplicated content on my site other than the layout.

hmmmm

[Brendon]

>> Now unless google sees autocashbackmobiles.co.uk and www.autocashbackmobiles.co.uk as two separate sites

Um, yes. Yes they do. Because they are. Seriously, if you want to compete in a sector like mobiles, having a clue how 1) the Internet and 2) search engines work is a really, really good idea

<edit> I see, you 301'd the www - that's a bit better, but now I've seen the spammy, get-you-banned links at the bottom too...

I'd say the site still needs work though :

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Unknown MySQL ...
... Unknown MySQL server host 'mysql1072.servage.net' (2) in /mounted-storage/home107c/sub006/sc63290-TJDT/www/includes/connect.php on line 6 ...
autocashbackmobiles.co.uk/product/1/1157050/Samsung.html

Also, are you randomly generating URLs for the make level pages or something? The indexed ones mostly seem to redirect to root, and that not just bad, it's crippling </edit>

[bhutastuta]

I think google at first did but when I added both the sites to webmaster tools it must have seen it as one site because it detects the same html file for verification. Also Once I set the preference to knock off the www at all times the dashboard for the site with the www was telling me you have set your preference to knock it off.

The only page that google can access with www is the homepage because any links within the site to another page knocks off the www.

But it looks like I'm climbing back up the serps though :tup back on 1st page for auto cashback mobiles. Well I was top earlier this morning topping mobiles.co.uk

[bhutastuta]

I'm using affilistore script and I have to pay to get rid of those links and soo I will.

about the warnings mysql stuff I think what had happened was that while google was crawling my website mysql database kind of gave up and kept dropping the connection. It was bad time for my host to do that but hopefully it won't ever happen again.

Well the one's it has indexed shouldn't be redirecting to homepage unless the product itself has disappeared.

Yes the majority of URL's are generated automatically due to the .htaccess files and the fact that the number of products are changing daily. Each time my product feed updates I submit a new sitemap to google. It's the best I can do with this script I suppose. Unless there is another solution out there.

[Brendon]

>> Yes the majority of URL's are generated automatically

Looks like a problem. Many of the indexed URLs are now simply redirecting to the root. This is a HUGE SEO issue. SEs universally expect the same URL to deliver substantially the same content - what you are doing could be regarded as "deceptive", and earn you a serious penalty

>> Unless there is another solution out there.

You might want to consider writing to an intermediate d/base, then cleaning that and using it as the basis for what you publish. It would allow you to control URLs etc more closely

[bhutastuta]

Looks like a problem. Many of the indexed URLs are now simply redirecting to the root. This is a HUGE SEO issue. SEs universally expect the same URL to deliver substantially the same content - what you are doing could be regarded as "deceptive", and earn you a serious penalty

Even if I'm submitting a new sitemap as soon as the URLs have changed and in the sitemap those URLs do not exist anymore?

>> Unless there is another solution out there.

You might want to consider writing to an intermediate d/base, then cleaning that and using it as the basis for what you publish. It would allow you to control URLs etc more closely

How do I go about doing this? I barely know anything about php and mysql hence I was recommended the affilistore script (pretty much the site you see). Ah hold on I think I have an idea. Now the numbers you see in the URL of the one's that redirect to the root are the product ID's. If I were to tell affilistore to not put them in, but use something else maybe that would work.

[Brendon]

>> Even if I'm submitting a new sitemap as soon as the URLs have changed and in the sitemap those URLs do not exist anymore?

*sigh* yes. Sitemap is nearly pointless for you - it's meant to be a specialty service for VERY large / high churn sites to improve depth and frequency of crawling, not your chance to issue direct commands to Googlebot. You really need to read up and learn about a function of SEs called "crawl control" to grasp why changing URLs regularly is such a bad idea

>> How do I go about doing this?

I know nearly nothing about affilistore, but it must be capable of producing a site with a stable URL structure, which is what you should be aiming for (which is why I suggested an intermediate d/base). I can't help on any specifics though