Which front page link to use?

[mikemac]

Well Matt if you opt for HTML sitemaps and there is no real advantage or disadvantage to an .xml format sitemap then I will keep my HTML sitemap too.

I didn't go with the Google site map when it was recommended to me because I have one page on my domain that is not related to my other pages. If I used a .xml format sitemap the unrelated page would be picked up by Google too, wouldn't it?

The unrelated page is about a topic that is kind of controversial. I don't want to delete the page because I think it would be a good topic for a blog at a later date. And I want to keep it on a web site until then so I can show it to certain people.

Mike

[mikemac]

Originally Posted by matt1biz

Nope, it's not mine, my sites never have broken links

Now that sparks another question.

Do you just make sure your links are right to start with or do you use some sort of software that tells you when a link is broken?

Mike

[mikemac]

Back to sitemaps.

I said Google picked up all my pages with my html sitemap. But after using site:www.domain.com I see Google says this on the second page "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 12 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

They omitted my report page because the top of it was the same as the introductory on my front page. So I deleted the top part on my front page last night. I've got the revisit after 30 days tag in my header.

Because of the 30 day tag will I have to wait for a month to see if that corrected it or is there another way to find out?

Google is not showing my sitemap page when I use site:www.domain.com. Should it?

I got 13 pages, 14 including the sitemap. With the front page there are 7 other pages linked in a series. 5 pages are not connected within the series but are on the sitemap. I've had my sitemap linked on all my pages but 4 for a couple of months. I haven't optimized the pages with keywords within the content with the 7 page series yet.

MSN picked up the sitemap and all the other pages except the 7 that are linked in the series. Should MSN pick the other 7 up or am I doing something wrong?

Yahoo has just picked up 5 pages, my front page, my sitemap, the 6th page within the series plus 2 of the other pages. But when I click Inlinks it shows them all except 3 that are not linked within the series. ??

Mike

[matt1biz]

The unrelated page is about a topic that is kind of controversial. I don't want to delete the page because I think it would be a good topic for a blog at a later date. And I want to keep it on a web site until then so I can show it to certain people.

If you don't want this page to be picked up by search engines at all then just use .robots.txt to disallow serach engines from crawling that particular page
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html#meta

Now that sparks another question.

Do you just make sure your links are right to start with or do you use some sort of software that tells you when a link is broken?

There was more than a hint of sarcasm in that Though checking for borken links is easy, I tend to use http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

I said Google picked up all my pages with my html sitemap. But after using site:www.domain.com I see Google says this on the second page "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 12 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

Are any of you links coming back as supplimental results? If so build some links into your internal pages as well. Deep links are just as important as homepage links.

[mikemac]

Thanks for the robots.txt tag and the Link Sleuth page Matt.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by my links coming back as supplimental results?

By deep links am I right in assuming you mean a link to one of my other pages on, say page 6 of my site, that is not also linked on either my front page or sitemap?

Mike

[matt1biz]

Google actually has to indexes, the normal index and the supplimental index which contains pages that Google don't place a high enough value on to return in the search results.

You can see them on this page,
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:...tart=9 0&sa=N
Notice underneath the description snippet the page is marked as being in the supplimental index.

Falling into the supplimental index can be for several reasons such as duplicate content issues, lack of internal links, or uniform title and meta tags throughout the site.

Deep links are simply links to your site's internal pages, having a decent link profile that includes a good ratio of deep links helps the site to get indexed and to avoid falling into the supplimental results.

[mikemac]

Originally Posted by matt1biz

Google actually has to indexes, the normal index and the supplimental index which contains pages that Google don't place a high enough value on to return in the search results.

You can see them on this page,
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:...tart=9 0&sa=N
Notice underneath the description snippet the page is marked as being in the supplimental index.

Falling into the supplimental index can be for several reasons such as duplicate content issues, lack of internal links, or uniform title and meta tags throughout the site.

Deep links are simply links to your site's internal pages, having a decent link profile that includes a good ratio of deep links helps the site to get indexed and to avoid falling into the supplimental results.

Oh I see the supplemental results now for 5 of my pages. Google has picked up my sitemap html page for a total of 14 pages now. It shows supplemental results for my sitemap for some reason. I don't know why the other 4 show supplemental results either. When I click Similar pages beside each one they are all coming up "did not match any documents".

I've just made some changes to my pages in the past week since I watched Peter's Traffic Blueprint videos. Do you think if Google was going to get rid of the supplemental results for those 5 pages would they have done it by now, since I've made the changes? You know what I mean I don't want to make more changes yet if the changes I've made haven't been recognized by Google yet.

13 pages are showing then the 14th shows when I click "repeat the search with the omitted results included." To explain this I'm going to add my site to my signature file. I've got 16 posts now so I should be able to. Note how my domain name is in the title of both my front page and my report page. Could this be the only reason my report page is being omitted?

Or could it be because I'm using the same keyword phrase for both pages? When I do a search for that keyword phrase my front page is in the number 1 spot and my report page is in the number 2 spot. But again that's no big deal because nobody does a search for that keyword phrase and my front page was in the top spot a couple of years ago when I didn't even use a keyword meta tag.

This is all experimental testing for my next web site.

If my report page is being omitted because my domain name is in the title of both my front page and my report page, then maybe that is why my sitemap page is showing the supplemental results cause I also have my domain name in the title of my sitemap page.

Am I getting confused or what?

Mike

[mikemac]

Well I guess I can't add my link to my sig file to explain what I'm saying yet. In one post I read you need 15 but in another I read you need 20. Do you understand what I'm trying to say Matt?

Mike

[matt1biz]

Oh I see the supplemental results now for 5 of my pages. Google has picked up my sitemap html page for a total of 14 pages now. It shows supplemental results for my sitemap for some reason. I don't know why the other 4 show supplemental results either.

Don't worry too much about it for now, it's not terminal Just make sure that you have different pages titles and meta descriptions on each page and you start to build links to internal pages as well as the homepage and you'll find over time they start to appear in the main index.

When I click Similar pages beside each one they are all coming up "did not match any documents".

Again don't worry about that, it can take a while before 'similar sites' start to appear.

I've just made some changes to my pages in the past week since I watched Peter's Traffic Blueprint videos. Do you think if Google was going to get rid of the supplemental results for those 5 pages would they have done it by now, since I've made the changes? You know what I mean I don't want to make more changes yet if the changes I've made haven't been recognized by Google yet.

Probably not, if it's a new site it probably doesn't get reindexed that reguarly. As long as you've done what I said above check back next month and you'll probably be fine. Patience is a big factor in SEO

If my report page is being omitted because my domain name is in the title of both my front page and my report page, then maybe that is why my sitemap page is showing the supplemental results cause I also have my domain name in the title of my sitemap page.

I doubt that's a factor, though as I said it's far better to have unique page titles on all pages. Try linking your sitemap from all of the other pages on the site (from the footer will be fine) over time get deep links into your more important internal pages and gradually you'll see your site getting into the main index.

[mikemac]

No Matt, the site that I'm talking about is not a new one. It's been up since early 2004. I registered the domain in, I think Dec., 2003. As mentioned this is all experimental testing for my next web site. Well who knows, maybe one or two of the pages will climb up the list for their keyword phrase though.

Okay let's assume my domain name is blablabla.com. My report page was titled blablabla Report and my sitemap page was titled Site Map for blablabla. I also had blablabla in the meta descriptions for both my report page and my sitemap page. So I have taken blablabla out of both my title and my meta descriptions for both my report page and my sitemap page. Is that what you mean Matt?

And I've added a link to my sitemap (plus all of my main pages like an index) in the footer to 3 of the 5 pages that shows Supplemental Result when using site:www.mydomain.com. My sitemap page is one of the other pages that shows Supplemental Result but it already had the links in the footer. The 5th page that shows Supplemental Result is a cloaking page for an affiliate program so I can't add the links to the footer on that one.

Does it matter if the same keyword phrase is being targetted with more than one page on my domain?

I'm using the meta tag revisit after 30 days with all my pages so we'll see what happens in a month.

I feel I'm on a real good learning curve with this. It would be much easier to try to explain things if I could put my site in my signature file though.

Thanks
Mike