I built my own website about 18 months ago for my business
(www.blackbirdstaffing.com) and after six months was still unable to
get listed in Google. Thinking it was the way I created the website I
hired a web developer with the explicit goal of getting listed in
google.  Hence the entire website was redone, splashscreen was
eliminated, etc and HTML best practices were used. It has been a year
now and still the site is not listed. Most of the other major search
engines have listed the site but all google has is reference sites. I
constantly review my weblogs and there are always visits by
googlebots, but still no direct listing. What's wrong? My content is
good, I'm not using frames except for one page that references my
database at my ASP website. Could I banned becase of past google "bad
practices" in my early website?

Ashley, thanks for your help. This is great information that I'll pass
to my web developer. However I've done most of the items you reccomend
already. I will certainly put my meta tags in W3 format if that's best
paractices. However I can't believe that's whats keeping me from being
indexed. I have seen friends hack together a one page website with
frontpage and be indexed in a couple weeks. I'm not even that
concerned about page rankings at this point as most people will search
for me by name not by industry type.
So at this point I'm really hoping for some actionable advice, a
silver bullet prescription, as I can't help thinking that something
about my early web site of 2 years ago "stalled" the google-bots and
flagged my site as non-indexable.  It's been my observation that
either a site IS indexed quickly, or it's NOT, and I need to beat
those odds and start over, so to speak.  As a recruiter, my single
highest priority is for my clients to be able to search on my name,
and come up with my site - instead, they come up with my old employer.
:(
I greatly appreciate any and all help.
thanks again

Joanne

ok do the following to all pages that contain meta tags:

change              <meta name="revisit-after" content"1 month">...
to                  <meta name="revisit-after" content"15days">...
 
& add this line     <meta name="robots" content="index, follow">....  
but keep this line  <meta name="robots" content="all">.....
 

let me know if this helps, Ashley Garvin

While you have removed your splash screen your first page is still
effective a welcome page telling people what you are about,
information better suited to your company page.  Your current first
page is helpful only on the first visit, it is not something that
visitors will want to read every time they visit.

It would improve usability and generally make things more efficient
from a users perspective to have the jobs listings should be as close
to the front page as possible (_directly_ on the front page if
possible) because I believe that is why people will come back to your
website over and over: to see the jobs listings.

Unfortunately you Jobs page 
http://www.blackbirdstaffing.com/browse_jobs.htm
does little more than point to the jobs listing
http://www.blackbirdstaffing.com/browse_jobs2.htm
which then points to the list itself.  
I would highly recommend you cut out that extra step.  

Now the user is presented with a search and encouraged to register.  
I would strongly recommend that instead you present users with the 10
or 20 most recently entries and a link to search for more or search by
categories or use more advanced search options.

http://www.monster.com/ for example has a "Seach Jobs" button
prominantly on it's front page.

> I'm not using frames except for one page that references my database
at my ASP website

you are using an iframe 
pointed at http://www.pcrecruiter.net/ 
iframes are even more recent that frames and in my opinion even more
likely to cause problems.
it is very likely that search bots are interpreting this simlarly to a
link to another entirely seperate site if they are recognising it at
all.

The part of your site that does change and get regularly updated is
probably not getting considered as part of your site.  You should get
the developer to incorporate it directly within your main site,
possibly using some sort of a Server Side Include.  Another
possibility would be to setup your webserver (i note it is Apache) to
"cloak" the location of the other site and so that instead of
something like
http://www.pcrecruiter.net/name_of_page.html 
users will see 
http://www.blackbirdstaffing.com/jobs/name_of_page.html 

another downsides of this frame is that the fixed size fails to let
users with large monitors use the space they have available.  (there
are various tricks with javascript that allow users to adjust the size
of text entry boxes or iframes but I would still strongly recommend
you avoid using iframes completely.)


There are other techniques to help get you site listed such as getting
links to your site posted as widely as possible on websites and public
messages boards.
Some dishonest users post everywhere and in inapropriate places, with
nothing but their advertisement.  if you post to any messages boards,
online groups or web logs you would be wise to include a link to your
site in your user profile or user signature so that it appears with
every one of your posts.
Discretely including a link to your site at the end of your email can
be very effective, particularly if those messages are being posted to
a public forum and getting archived on the web.

Wow.  I appreciate the thought and effort in replyling to my dilemma,
so thank you for that.
However, while I always value and appreciate subjective feedback on my
web site and will keep it in mind should I ever wish to redesign it
again, my single priority at this time is to seek advice on how to get
indexed and listed in Google, primarily concerned with people
searching on my name....
Regarding my Jobs page, I will forward your comments to Main Sequence
Technologies, as that is the one piece that is truly outside my
control, including the need to use IFrame to include it - no question
but that this piece could be enhanced, and I know they are addressing
that.  On the up side, that page contains no information that needs to
be searched upon - and, keep in mind that Main Sequence Tech has a
large installed recruiter customer base, all of whom incorporate the
same jobs page, and whose web sites are successfully indexed by
Google.
Last but not least, I do post jobs in other areas and have registered
in lots of directories, not in an effort to be dishonest but rather as
I post jobs it would be absurd not to include my URL, and that has
made no difference although it has afforded many people the ability to
find me despite not being able to "google" me.
I'm not yet concerned about my rating in Google, which I understand
would be affected by outside links to me, since I'm not indexed at
all.  Ergo the dilemma!
thanks again
JHf

i dunno, i googled "Blackbird Technical Staffing" and your site came up first.