Hello ortsed-ga
Thank-you for your question. I have taken some time to study your
site and these are the suggestions that I have to make. If you have
any questions or queries regarding this answer please ask for
clarification and I will do my best to help.
Upon loading the site map page I am presented with a huge list of
URL's. On Google's Webmaster recommendation page (see below for a
link) it states that "if the site map is larger than 100 or so links,
you may want to break the site map into separate pages" and "keep the
links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)". Your
site map at present exceeds this limit (I think I counted 1546 links
on your site map!) and could possibly be ignored by Google.
I would suggest that the site map is rewritten so that it is smaller
and has more structure to it (that is break the links down into groups
of similar content). It would also be favourable to add some other
text to the page - rather than just having a list of links to have
some content as well.
By this I mean give the page a title, tell the users of this page what
the page is and to have a small summary from each article with the
link. Do not be afraid to have a number of site maps for each
separate section of your site.
Again the Google Webmaster Guidelines suggest "write pages that
clearly and accurately describe your content".
I have also noticed that the site map page is not a fully formed web
page - it does not include all the tags that you would normally
expect. For instance <HTML>, <HEAD>, <TITLE>, <BODY> are all missing
and this should DEFINITELY be checked and improved upon. Again the
guidelines suggest "make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are
descriptive and accurate".
It could also be argued that your site map is breaking one of Google's
basic quality principles - "Make pages for users, not for search
engines".
Additionally the link to the site map on the home page appears to be
hidden. The tag to display it is <a href="site-map.html"
style="visibility:hidden">_</a>
Another of Google's quality principles is "Avoid hidden text or hidden
links" so your site may be falling foul of this rule and Google may be
"responding negatively" to it.
"These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or
manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other
misleading practices not listed here, (e.g. tricking users by
registering misspellings of well-known web sites). It's not safe to
assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included
on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their
energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above
will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy
better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes
they can exploit."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
All of the Google webmaster help pages can be found here:
://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html
In your question you also mentioned your suspicions about your query
strings, I would highly recommend that you read through this answer by
fellow researcher larre-ga:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=196839
There is also a wealth of information available on this by searching
through Google:
://www.google.com/search?q=spider+%22query+strings%22
If you are running on an Apache web server it is also a simple task to
change all of your links to static links (even on your home page).
The technique you need to research here is called MOD_REWRITE and it
allows you to rewrite your URL's so that they all appear to be static.
This is the type of technique used by sites such as Amazon.
As a conclusion, if you redesign the page to include fewer links, a
fully formed html page, more reader-friendly content and it abides by
Google's design guidelines I believe it will be more successful. Once
again, if you have any questions on the issues I have flagged up here
please ask for clarification and I will do my best to help. |
