Okay, so, what am I doing wrong?

[LiberMan]

So, I've designed my pages for humans and not for search engines. My web site hosting architecture is a bit complex, but every page is within three clicks of the home page and I have no hidden or tricky links. While my HTML is messy (an artifact of the editor I'm using), it does validate. I'm not knowingly using any Search Engine Spam techniques; the keywords in my meta tags are all relevant to the content. I generate new sitemaps twice a month and upload them to Google religiously. My web site hosting is not static; I try to add new content at least once a week. Finally, my content is by and large unique; so far I haven't found a single web site hosting out there doing what I'm doing on anything close to the same scale I am, even though I'm still less than halfway to where I want to be eventually.

And still, Google doesn't seem to know that I exist.

Oh, my main page is indexed; you can google on my website hosting title and the home page comes up. But, so far, none of the primary content (the timetables) seems to be indexed. Using Google's webmaster tools to check my website hosting, only three pages (out of 5 even show up at all and one is a test page which has long since been relocated. And while one timetable does show as being indexed, a google on "timetable Mobile Noxapater" (which should show a hit) returns just nine results, none of which are in any way associated with my website hosting.

Back when I was working out the kinks in my CSS formatting (with the kind help of the members of this forum), the test page did show up on Google's list and in fact, according to my web logs, I got several hits on it as the result of Google searches. But for the past two months--nada. Yahoo is showing several of my pages, as is MSN, but so far I have almost completely managed to elude Google's notice.

I'm not going to obsess over my page rank; as I said, my content is unique enough that it should make a strong showing in any suitably targeted search. But if it's not in their index at all--then what do I do?

Standing by for suggestions, I am...

[paul]

In my view use of Sitemaps seems here in your case redundant, there are few downside of XML sitemaps like it may have scraping vulnerability, In my opinion in such case I would prefer stop using it and concentrate more on getting quality inbound links and keyword optimization part.

[daxianjin]

Paul has made a point

[mobile_walls]

It is most probably not import that your HTML is messy for search engines but what count is On-site and Off-site optimization.
And you have probably fail there. Search engines does not like dynamical pages,...they do not like for example this kind of dynamic extensions .php?adfujkfsdlk;lesdfk
Try to do some research to chose right words into your title and body and then look around for your competition that score well on search engines.
Send email to webmaster and ask him if he can place link back to your site, try to write some article and place link to your web site hosting into article, try to write news about your web site hosting and submit it to news website hosting etc...
They are many technique that will help you. Start with reading some Search Engine Optimization article and then start with working. And be patience. The positive results will come for sure.

[DPS Computing]

If there is one word of advice I can give you I would say avoid sitemaps at all costs.

They are spammers / harvestors / hackers dreams and basically gives them the blueprints to your web site hosting which in turn leads them to spam each and every single e-mail address you have as well as find potential vulnerability to launch and attack or abuse your services.

[sb123]

Hi!

Ref: Your links at the bottom of your post: [Garden Ornaments] [Search Engine Optimization Forum]
does these 2 sites:
grandi*llusi*ons.*co*.u*k (age: 7-1/2 years) Homepage Page Ranking 4
and
cl*icks*.*ws (age: 8 months) Homepage Page Ranking 4 & /forum PR 3
belong to you? (Please remove the asterisks)

If they do, then you already know the answers to your questions, because the second web site hosting is an Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization forum! That's a great achievement -- Page Ranking 4 and 3 in less than 8 months -- age: June 30, 2007!!!

Obviously, these 2 sites are well-off in Search Engine Optimization. If you're speaking of a different site, then most probably you have the answer to the problems to that too (with almost 7-1/2 years web experience, if I am not mistaken!)

If I may ask, what's the name of this new web site hosting where Google is ignoring you?

[treepeas]

Should I not put a web site hosting map on my page so? Most search engines say that they are useful for indexing?

[paul]

Using sitemap might be good for News sites because their content changes more often, even for blog I think just pinging is enough.

[Arbie]

I have read a couple of comments here that say that sitemaps should be avoided.

This is great news - for your competitors.

'Scraping and spammers dream' because they can find all your emails - this is not advice, this is simply avoiding the effective methods of hiding your email address and still making them accessible to users. Use mailto: links and it is irrelevant whether or not you have a sitemap - you email will be spammed anyway. Use PHP forms and you'll virtually eliminate this type of spam AND you'll make it a more enjoyable communication for your users.

Scraping doesn't need a sitemap. There are freely available tools on the internet that will easily download the entire website hosting (including css, html, php and images). Sitemaps simply do not make it easier for scrapers.

Sitemaps DO provide deep linking to your website hosting. Every link - no matter where it is in the web site hosting - is linked on the first page of an XML sitemap. Google spiders love sitemaps and all the sites that I have have a sitemap. Most have over 80% of the pages in the google index.

If you use a combination of sitemaps and pinging then you'll always be informing the key search engines that there is content worth a look. Add in to the mix an effective robots.txt and you can control the indexing of pages you don't want indexing whilst still giving ready access to the useful content.

I am more than happy for anyone to delete their sitemaps or in fact never create them - makes my online promotion in your space much easier.

[paul]

Well, overall what I see the sitemap is a supplementary tools and do not replace the existing crawl based mechanisms which a search engine follow, however if a webmaster using rich AJAX or Flash, they may help crawlers to discover the website hosting otherwise still I think it is time consuming and not necessary.

[Arbie]

Because you do not see the value - you haven't realised that you can automate it. Additionally, this has nothing to do with replacing the crawls (you can't) it simply makes them more effective. That is why I can get new pages into the google index in a couple of days max...

I only set it up once and then any and all future changes are automatically updated and Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all notified that there is an updated sitemap (I also have semi-automated robots.txt....)

[freeflyer]

Originally Posted by LiberMan

So, I've designed my pages for humans and not for search engines. My web site hosting architecture is a bit complex, but every page is within three clicks of the home page and I have no hidden or tricky links. While my HTML is messy (an artifact of the editor I'm using), it does validate. I'm not knowingly using any Search Engine Spam techniques; the keywords in my meta tags are all relevant to the content. I generate new sitemaps twice a month and upload them to Google religiously. My web site hosting is not static; I try to add new content at least once a week. Finally, my content is by and large unique; so far I haven't found a single web site hosting out there doing what I'm doing on anything close to the same scale I am, even though I'm still less than halfway to where I want to be eventually.

And still, Google doesn't seem to know that I exist.

Oh, my main page is indexed; you can google on my website hosting title and the home page comes up. But, so far, none of the primary content (the timetables) seems to be indexed. Using Google's webmaster tools to check my website hosting, only three pages (out of 5 even show up at all and one is a test page which has long since been relocated. And while one timetable does show as being indexed, a google on "timetable Mobile Noxapater" (which should show a hit) returns just nine results, none of which are in any way associated with my website hosting.

Back when I was working out the kinks in my CSS formatting (with the kind help of the members of this forum), the test page did show up on Google's list and in fact, according to my web logs, I got several hits on it as the result of Google searches. But for the past two months--nada. Yahoo is showing several of my pages, as is MSN, but so far I have almost completely managed to elude Google's notice.

I'm not going to obsess over my page rank; as I said, my content is unique enough that it should make a strong showing in any suitably targeted search. But if it's not in their index at all--then what do I do?

Standing by for suggestions, I am...

what you're doing wrong is nothing, unfortunately though what you're doing right is very little.

You've done about 5% of what you need for onsite Search Engine Optimization. How competitive is your term/s? How many of your pages are actually indexed (as opposed to how many are returned in the serps). How's your nav and internal linking? Have you checked for duplicates?

First off do a site:www check on google and see what comes up (dont forget to check the supplemental 'results we havent included'), then make sure you have no duplicated pages arising from things like wildcards in the url (normally happens a lot with dynamic content, especially on e-commerce sites).

Theres sooooooo much more you can do yet, so dont panic..

[paul]

Originally Posted by Arbie

Because you do not see the value - you haven't realised that you can automate it. Additionally, this has nothing to do with replacing the crawls (you can't) it simply makes them more effective. That is why I can get new pages into the google index in a couple of days max...

I only set it up once and then any and all future changes are automatically updated and Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all notified that there is an updated sitemap (I also have semi-automated robots.txt....)

That's sound good you're getting nice result using sitemap, however I don't use it and get similar good results which you've mentioned, that is the reason it take me off to use a sitemap.

[freeflyer]

i dont see any reason not to use sitemaps.. they provide useful information in the webmaster tools as well, ie now many pages are indexed from it etc. Admittedly they dont gaurantee anything, but given the choice betweeen not using them and using them for a clients site, you use them, simple as that. They dont do any harm, but they MAY do some good.

In the case of MSN, in two cases i've had sites that havent been listed during the normal MSN delay with a new site.. i've created a webmaster tools account for them submitted a sitemap, and next month they were there? coincidence? maybe, but not a coincidence i'd be willing to overlook.

[organics]

Do you have a "Site Search" feature? If not, I would add one, many search engine appear to like them.

[freeflyer]

not so sure.. search engines can index web site hosting searches, but they can lead to duplicate pages.