My website is up!

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Ryan,

Follow the second article you linked to, and read the "post by Vanessa"

She says:



Her whole post talks about a very cool tool Google added to its webmaster console last year.

(posting from my pocketpc in the car)I am very familiar with this tool as I manage a significant number of sites through google's webmaster console. What she says is "don't stop using the 301, but google has this tool to help with their index."The 301 is still an essential step.
 
This is for other domains, not two canonicalizations of the same one. For other domains, a 301 is the way to go.

This is actually for both cases, canonical and multi url.
 
OMG!!! the tech guys are speaking a launguage that I wish I could understand any part of! I really am trying to follow along

It is a beautiful new web site twiggy! And I'm wishing the very best of luck for you.
 
The 301 is still an essential step.

I guess that's all in your definition of essential. When Google's engineers say you don't need a 301 for them anymore, that's not essential in my mind. I feel it's easier to properly set up DNS and use the Webmaster tool. Either way, it's invisible to the visitors when done correctly.
 
There's more to SEO than Google and their index. There are the other major engines, plus the user experience.

Remember, the post you referenced from Vanessa says "Do the 301 and the webmaster tool."
 
Actually, a DNS entry is a better user experience than a 301. It's instantaneous, not subject to any script or server processing. For the most part, it's nearly impossible to tell most of the time on broadband, but a DNS entry doesn't require the browser to make two requests, which can often been seen on a dial-up connection.

There's no good published guidance from Yahoo or MSN on canonical domains. I understand your "better safe than sorry" viewpoint, but I'd doubt Google is the only one to figure this out. Yahoo and MSN may not have an issue. All of our results in Yahoo show www.bloomery.com, not bloomery.com, although I've used bloomery.com in links. If you do an MSN search for bloomery.com, all links show as www.bloomery.com. I'm personally not one to take an off-hand comment from a competitor as gospel for MSN or Yahoo.

Off hand, I can see three different ways Yahoo and MSN would choose to handle canonical domains:

1) Automatic canonicalization. Treat www.site.com as being the same as site.com for every website. Out of the millions of sites out there, find me five which would be affected by this (hint: one is listed in a blog post you cited). If a site publisher has different stuff, it should be listed with a proper subdomain, such as differentstuff.site.com, or www.site.com/differentstuff. Not only is the engineering easier, but it's a better user experience than what Google prescribes.

2) Don't have a duplicate content penalty. In all the discussions everywhere, has there been solid evidence that Yahoo and MSN have a duplicate content penalty like Google does?

3) Validate page content (with maybe an MD5 checksum) between the same pages for the different canonical domains. If the checksum is different, consider them different pages; if they're the same, remove one from the index.

While Matt is an expert as far as Google is concerned, and most of the SEO talk focuses on Google, the other two main players really haven't discussed what they do in good detail.
 
thanks for all the positive comments!
about the delivery charge.. it's not a large area.. (and i'm the most expensive for in-town deliveries)
about the tech talk...way over my head people! are you suggesting that i go back to Media99 (after the wonerful job and the patience that they had for me) and tell them how to do their job? I'm not comfortable with that at all..
 
twiggy,

what was suggested is to get Media99 to tweak one thing about your setup. You have two domains pointing to the same website. Google will see these as two separate websites with identical content, and penalize your site in their rankings. This is very bad, as you can imagine. Ryan and I have simply been discussing one fine detail of how to do this. Your website will be better off if you have Media99 do exactly what Ryan says--I happen to think there's an easier way to skin that same cat, but his way is very good advice.

Optimizing a website for the search engines involves a lot of nuances, and the search engines are constantly tweaking their rules. It would not be surprising if Media99 wasn't up to date on all the nuances, since SEO isn't part of their core business (same way you're probably not up to date with all the nuances, since it's not part of your business). But, you are the customer, you paid for their services, and they need to render service to your satisfaction.
 
We got sidetracked. Your design is probably the best I've seen from Media99.
 
Twiggy,

Congratulations on the new site!

Google has what is called the "sandbox" The other major engines (MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask) seem to have sites show up in searches as soon as their bots find you. The Google "sandbox" takes 3-8 months from the time they find you. My site, www.flowerpr.com went live in January, 2007 and I didn't place anywhere in Google until March. I tell my clients to post something as soon as you get the domain name so that the sandox time starts running.

To be sure you're found, you should either 1) submit your site to Google or 2) have a link to your site from a site that google and other search engines are regularly searching - you'll know those from the web logs and site rankings.
 
To be sure you're found, you should either 1) submit your site to Google or 2) have a link to your site from a site that google and other search engines are regularly searching - you'll know those from the web logs and site rankings.



yes.. i've signed up for all the local listings on the search engines...yahoo, msn, local.com, google, and ask city.. then i asked friends to post a review as soon as they saw me.. the post about local business searches & Yellowpages really helped!
 
Twiggy,

Congratulations on the new site!

Google has what is called the "sandbox" The other major engines (MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask) seem to have sites show up in searches as soon as their bots find you. The Google "sandbox" takes 3-8 months from the time they find you. My site, www.flowerpr.com went live in January, 2007 and I didn't place anywhere in Google until March. I tell my clients to post something as soon as you get the domain name so that the sandox time starts running.

To be sure you're found, you should either 1) submit your site to Google or 2) have a link to your site from a site that google and other search engines are regularly searching - you'll know those from the web logs and site rankings.


Good advice on how to be found ... but not true about the sandbox.

I've routinely launched sites and that have placed in Google in a matter of days. The Meditech site had top 10 rankings in 2 days, a site for a biomedical consultant had the #4 spot in under a week, and a couple of flower shops had top 10 in about a week or less.

The "sandbox" effect, long denied by Google, is typically just the result of new sites not being effectively launched, linked and promoted. All the more reason to have an SEO professional be part of your web project BEFORE launch and during design, rather than the more traditional approach of launching a site, wondering if it will rank, then hiring someone to fix it later.

Ryan
 
Much of what people call the "Google sandbox" is the Supplemental index, where pages can be placed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's a place where google places pages it thinks are spammy or duplicate; other times it's just pages which are new and haven't been incorporated into the main index yet.
 
The supplemental index is being phased out. It's crawl rate is up to nearly that of the main index, and the supplemental results are no longer labelled as such.

The supplemental results (or SEO Hell, as some call it) were a place for pages Google didn't deem relevant enough or popular (linked) enough to be in the main index, so they were used to fill in some results when the main index results were thin for a certain search phrase.

Ryan
 
IMO Google stopped labeling pages supplemental because it was making the chattering class of webmasters crazy.

AFAICT, pages that were supplemental still showed in search but lacked G's threshold of inbound links. I believe they were/are spidered less often.

Re the sandbox: I've interpreted it as a filter applied to sites that popped out of nowhere in highly competitive areas - travel, pharma, gambling, etc... For niche sites about less competitive subjects - that are targeted, focused and on-topic - I've seen new sites do well right off the bat.

Speaking of doing well......Twiggy, I'm seeing you listed as #8 on Page 1 for florist yerington nv today. :) Let's hope you shoot up past Wesley Berry and the other OG's listed above you soon.
 
Yes!! I'm working on it! I checked yesterday afternoon and my ranking was #5 for florist in Yerington, NV..I've signed up for all the local listings that were listed on the other post.. and now i'm just waiting.

and another thing...I heard yesterday from one of my customers that the gals at the Post office checked out the website (address was on postcard) First and then came down to the shop!! THAT just tickles me PINK!!! and on the same note.. a friend from the library called to place an order.. while looking at the site!!

the ranking is good news.. but even better i love that my local customers are taking such an interest!!
 
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