Hi Dan:
So here is the Google problem. My website located at http://www.2linc.com was being reindexed by Google about twice a week. It then stopped being reindexed and has since reverted to an older cache of the site. When I resubmit the website to Google they index the site and then the cache becomes correct. After a few days Google’s cache of my website reverts back to the old one again. Any ideas what is happening?
First of all, I would like to thank you for the all the great articles you provide. It really provides a lot of helpful information to the novice website designer like myself. So here is the Google problem. My website located at http://www.2linc.com was being reindexed by Google about twice a week. It then stopped being reindexed and has since reverted to an older cache of the site. When I resubmit the website to Google they index the site and then the cache becomes correct. After a few days Google’s cache of my website reverts back to the old one again. Any ideas what is happening?
Of course, the old cache has very poor rankings when compared to the new cache.
Thank you for any assistance you might be able to provide.
Lance Nelson
2L inc.
http://www.2linc.com
Hi Lance:
Thanks for your kind words. Hopefully we can get things moving in the right direction for you.
There are a couple big problems you’ll need to deal with before Google will handle your site the way you want to. Luckily, they haven’t banned you yet, so there’s a chance to do something about it.
First of all, you need to immediately remove the hidden text from your site. That’s considered “search engine spam,” and if all you get is bad rankings and a hard time getting indexed, consider yourself lucky.
You don’t need to do that to get good rankings. Simply putting the appropriate text in the right places on the page will do more for you than hidden text, or any other tricks you may have tried.
Second, and equally important, there are almost no sites on the entire web that link to yours. The only link you have that’s even going to show up in Google is your Open Directory listing. The other links will probably never show up in Google. If you want Google to index your site regularly, and keep the listing up to date, you need to work on linking.
There is a nice site that offers a free report on linking strategy, and I’d encourage you to download it. The site is called Linking Matters, and you can find it at http://www.linkingmatters.com
Thanks!
Dan Thies – author of Search Engine Optimization Fast Start
http://www.cannedbooks.com
Hi Dan:
Wow, you really are awesome. I really didn’t even think I would receive a reply. Thanks for your advice. I was trying to emulate www.urlwithheldtoprotecttheguilty.com They rank number 1 for “engraving tools”. They have lots of hidden text, they stuff keywords into meta tags like author and style, and have multiple duplicate sites that point to theirs. They obviously just spam correctly or maybe it is because they have a lot of sites linking back to theirs. That must nullify all of their bad behavior.
Thanks again!
Lance Nelson
Hi Lance:
It doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate action, but Google does have a form where you can report spam. You can find it here: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Hidden text isn’t any more useful than visible text, and you already have enough visible text on your page – if you optimize it and work on links, you should do very well. Google doesn’t consider the contents META tags in their rankings. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get caught.
You may want to take a look at this article, on a 10-minute homepage tune-up process. Your page is probably okay, but this is a good checklist. https://murdok.org/Murdok-4-2003021110-Minute-Homepage-Tune-Up.html
Dan Thies
http://www.cannedbooks.com
Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22
