Site banned by Google- reccomend an SEO expert please.

Big Bill wrote:

On 27 Nov 2006 08:21:35 -0800, "Phil Payne"
phil (AT) isham-research (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

I really don't like to see HTML like this:

.. style='visibility:hidden' height=0 ..

There may be a legitimate reason for it, but IMO it's quite likely to
generate a false positive for hidden text even if it's actuallz benign.

You have 288 validation errors:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...ampspecs.co.uk

At the very least, you should fix the Google verification metatag by
chopping the " /" out of the back.

Phil, who was that to?

Click the validator link.

On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:22:59 -0500, Lampspecs wrote:

I need to find an SEO expert in the UK who can look at my site and fix
whatever is wrong so that it is fully indexed. Getting a good rank would
be nice, but a listing is really the first step.

My domain www.lampspecs.co.uk is old but the site is only 4 months old.
The site has over 3000 pages and has about 100 indexed by MSN, this has
been static for the past two months. We have 700 pages index by Yahoo and
that has fallen from 1300 in the last week. We have 11 in Google.com and 3
on Google.co.uk for now... BUT Google is in the process of removing my
site from its listings. On the day that it said that my site was being
removed it briefly listed 25 pages for about an hour.


I am looking for a recommendation for an SEO expert who can fix this site
an provide a list of sites/testomonials to prove their ability. I have
spent a lot of money on optimisation in the past to no avail and I don't
want to make the same mistake again.

It doesn't look like your site is banned by Google. Google shows
somewhere between 25 and 41 pages in the index, but only 14 are not in the
Supplemental Results.

Can you get rid of the session IDs?

Can you grep your log files to see
what URLs the bots are requesting to see if they are hitting the session
IDs?

Another thing that could be done is to optimize the product pages. This
is an example of a non-optimized <title> tag:
5 Foot 58W 827 Very Warm White (GE)

Take a look at the pages in the Supplemental Results, for example this
page:
/Light-Bulbs-Tubes/Infra-Red/Infra-Red-375W-ES-Satin

Notice how there is no content on the page except for a single image.
The alt text of the image is: irr125L.gif

There is a <title> tag that does not have any keywords in it, and an
unordered list with no valuable text. There is no <h1> tag.

You have many similar product pages with nothing
significant to distinguish them in the eyes of Google. There should be
information on your product pages to tell Google what they are about and
that they are different from one another.

Here is another similar example from the Supplemental Results:
/Light-Bulbs-Tubes/Mains-Voltage-SES/64861T-IM-40W-SES-Pearl-Osram

You are also using Meta redirects on your "product removed" pages:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh"
content="3;url=http://www.lampspecs.co.uk"></HEAD>

A 404 page can contain a list of other products and a search box to
encourage people who land there to continue browsing, but I don't think it
is a good idea to redirect.

Don't take the information in the Google Webmaster Control Panel
literally. It is often outdated and inaccurate information. Compare the
"last visited" date in the control panel with the actual last visit in the
logs -- it's probably wrong.

Use the robots.txt file to keep search engines out of the links to
login/register, add items to cart, view basket, checkout, etc.

It's probably not a good idea to link to the directory on your links page.
Submit your site to good directories, but only for one-way links -- expect
to pay for most of them. Don't join reciprocal linking schemes.

The home page <title> is very specific and highly competitive. I would
expand the <title> tag in the early stages to try to capture regional and
long-tail keywords. Once you have enough inbound links (a lot), then you
can target something as specific as "light bulbs". I think a regional
keyword would be a good idea -- possibly an entire section of the site
designed to capture regional keyword traffic.

The site definitely needs inbound links from related sites. You don't
have many links, and most of them look like they are from
forums.

Thanks Tips, I'll take that as a working list and see what I can do
these are helpfull suggestions. I don't have access to logs.

I don't understand the comment about supplimental pages as they all
contain the specifications of the specific product being sold.

I do have more links but they don't show up and almost nine if my
suppliers will give me backlinks, GE, Philips,Osram etc. Rather a shame
don't you think.


--
Lampspecs

Lampspecs wrote:

Thanks Tips, I'll take that as a working list and see what I can do
these are helpfull suggestions. I don't have access to logs.

I don't understand the comment about supplimental pages as they all
contain the specifications of the specific product being sold.

You can see your Supplemental Results by copying & pasting the following
line into your browser's address bar:
google.com/search?q=site:www.lampspecs.co.uk&start=20

Notice how the listings from your site have the words "Supplemental Results"
tacked on the end. That means that Google doesn't like the pages.

There are a few reasons that Google puts pages in the Supplemental Results:
* Pages with no content
* Multiple pages with too-similar content
* pages with no IBLs
* pages indexed with session IDs


This is a sample page from the Supplemental Results:
lampspecs.co.uk/Light-Bulbs-Tubes/Energy-Saving-Sensor/Low-Energy-Sensor-11W-BC-827

There is very little on that page that tells Google what the page is about.
Search engines are going to be looking at things like:
* <title> tag
* <h1>
* alt attribute text
* body text
* link text from other pages on the site that link to that page

Product specs like, "EC SENSOR 11W BC 827 SYL" do not really provide any
useful information to a robot on how it is different from "EC GU10 9W 830
15K MEGAMAN". Remember that you are talking to a computer. Computers need
real language keywords. It is likely that they aren't going to be able to
determine that "EC GU10 9W 830 15K" is some kind of model number for a
light bulb. A human user can assume that it is a model number because the
main menu choice is "light bulbs & tubes". It isn't as easy for a computer
to figure that out. There is no HTML element to tell search engines that a
piece of text is a model number.

As far as a search engine knows, the text "EC GU10 9W 830 15K MEGAMAN" could
be a code snippet in a programming language or a server error message. I
don't think the string of numbers and letters in the product specs alone
are enough to distinguish pages from each other in the eyes of Google.


There probably aren't too many people looking specifically for these words:
<title>Low Energy Sensor 11W BC 827 Sylvania</title>

What is the main keyword that people are looking for "bulb"? "light
bulb"? "lamp"? Are they looking for a "motion sensor lightbulb"
or "lamp"? "Security lighting"? "Indoors" or "Outdoors"? There is room
for more description, and you have an opportunity to pick up more long-tail
keywords.

I do have more links but they don't show up and almost nine if my
suppliers will give me backlinks, GE, Philips,Osram etc. Rather a shame
don't you think.

If you are having trouble building good inbound links you might need to hire
a specialist. Or read a lot about the subject. You may need to build a
section of content in the form of articles and tutorials to attract IBLs.
There are many methods of building links.

Another suggestion: it looks like your site doesn't work with the "www"
removed from the URL. Consider redirecting the non-www version to the www
version with a 301 redirect, otherwise some people may think that your site
is down if they type in the URL or link to you without the www.

Tips wrote:

Another suggestion: it looks like your site doesn't work with the "www"
removed from the URL. Consider redirecting the non-www version to the www
version with a 301 redirect, otherwise some people may think that your
site is down if they type in the URL or link to you without the www.

Just had another thought: try running this link-checking tool on your site
to see if you have broken links or strange URLs where spiders might be
going:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

I wonder if the site links to itself without the www anywhere.