If corrected ( redirects removed ) and left alone will Google forgive and re-include automatically or is this a job for a re-inclusion request...
I'm in a very similar situation where half a site disappeared in a matter of hours...
In fact... if your pages no longer show up using the site: prefix but other pages of your site are still included in the index then I'm in the exact same situation as you...
I'd search for a user- AND crawler-friendly CMS/shop, redo the site and file a reinclusion request. JS-redirect penalties typically last 30 days and Google checks for a revamp every once in a while, but AFTER reading and rereading the guidelines to make the site compliant a reinclusion request should be a good idea. Sebastian
> If corrected ( redirects removed ) and left alone will Google forgive > and re-include automatically or is this a job for a re-inclusion > request...
> I'm in a very similar situation where half a site disappeared in a > matter of hours...
> In fact... if your pages no longer show up using the site: prefix but > other pages of your site are still included in the index then I'm in > the exact same situation as you...
We went over to VPASP and then put a reinclusion request in to Google explaining that the javascript redirects were essential parts of the software and couldn't be removed. I also said that I saw their point regarding them and so had done something about it by going over to VPASP which is a pure database driven package.
Guess what, both our sites (www.temptationsdirect.co.uk and www.bondage-gear-direct.com) have now been re-included in the Google index, i.e. THE BAN HAS BEEN LIFTED, (sorry to shout but as you can probably understand I am happy about this).
> We went over to VPASP and then put a reinclusion request in to Google > explaining that the javascript redirects were essential parts of the > software and couldn't be removed. I also said that I saw their point > regarding them and so had done something about it by going over to > VPASP which is a pure database driven package.
> Guess what, both our sites (www.temptationsdirect.co.ukandwww.bondage-gear-direct.com) have now been re-included in the Google > index, i.e. THE BAN HAS BEEN LIFTED, (sorry to shout but as you can > probably understand I am happy about this).
> I repeat what I said before get out of EROL now.
PS I have put this message on all the threads for EROL as I really want people to understand that their ecommerce problems are not always to do with SEO or link building, sometimes it is simly the wrong software (of course you then need to do the SEO and link building as well).
> We went over to VPASP and then put a reinclusion request in to Google > explaining that the javascript redirects were essential parts of the > software and couldn't be removed. I also said that I saw their point > regarding them and so had done something about it by going over to > VPASP which is a pure database driven package.
> Guess what, both our sites (www.temptationsdirect.co.ukandwww.bondage-gear-direct.com) have now been re-included in the Google > index, i.e. THE BAN HAS BEEN LIFTED, (sorry to shout but as you can > probably understand I am happy about this).
> PS I have put this message on all the threads forEROLas I really > want people to understand that their ecommerce problems are not always > to do with SEO or link building, sometimes it is simly the wrong > software (of course you then need to do the SEO and link building as > well).
> > We went over to VPASP and then put a reinclusion request in to Google > > explaining that the javascript redirects were essential parts of the > > software and couldn't be removed. I also said that I saw their point > > regarding them and so had done something about it by going over to > > VPASP which is a pure database driven package.
> > Guess what, both our sites (www.temptationsdirect.co.ukandwww.bondage-gear-direct.com) have now been re-included in the Google > > index, i.e. THE BAN HAS BEEN LIFTED, (sorry to shout but as you can > > probably understand I am happy about this).
> > I repeat what I said before get out ofEROLnow.
> If you are using EROL ecommerce system, you should do a search within > this group for [EROL].
Ok, but what's your problem with title optimizing? In the Erol forum they didn't link a thread, just our topics list. Thus tagging the title should help these users to find their stuff easier.
> It's a major issue that the software vendors have to take ownership of > if they are to continue claims of being "search engine friendly".
I just found the threads here on the subject of Erol and I'll just say at the start I'm no blinkered Erol Robot as I like to think of them ;)
However, I do have a question.
Our site suffered, as many other Erol stores did around the same time (Feb 23rd and onwards). Initially we lost around 20 indexed pages in one day. This accelerated until at our lowest we had 6 indexed pages.
Since about 2 weeks ago we're slowly seeing re-indexing - currently we have around 48 pages indexed and for some product specific search terms we now rank again at the #1 position.
So, my question is, if it is right that Google is penalising Erol sites for re-directs then why would we be seeing this re-indexing?
As I say I'm no Erol blinkered fan and we're already taking steps which include moving to other software but I have spent a lot of the past month trying to find a hypothesis that explains what happened/ what might happen in the near term future.
Hi Cathy I have seen a lot of Google penalties that last more or less exactly 30 days. By having the site automatically return afterwards does not mean that the site is now deemed to be "proper". A site set up like the EROL system is just asking for a penalty - redirects like that are seen as a bad thing by Google.
Around christmas time 2006 Google penalized a lot of Danish shops that were based on a shop-software which was frame-based. Since the frame- pages themselves were not ranking very well, they resorted to specialized pages, made for the search engines, with a javascript redirect to the frame-site. What they set up was perhaps worse than what EROL uses (obfuscated redirect, search-engine optimized content), but they are built on the same idea: make pages that the search engines can read "optimally" and redirect the user elsewhere. If you want more information, search for "sussie" and "bjarne" here in the groups. It wasn't pretty. It never is pretty when a shop owner is penalized for something that an "expert" put together.
Don't take the re-indexing as a sign of approval for your site. Fix things while you have time. Feel free to link here from your site or the EROL forum; I feel it's a shame that they feel that hiding discussion is the way to handle criticism. We wouldn't be posting here if we weren't interested in getting more people (including EROL shop owners!) into the index better. We're not out to fight EROL :-).
Cathyy, first of all I don't think you *must* move to another software. Erol's shopping cart has its merits, and you've invested in that shopping cart. The problem is that frames and JS redirects are not search engine friendly. Well, not that user friendly too, because bookmarking is a PITA and under some circumstances the browser is forced into flashing infinite loops. You can stick with the core shopping cart and design the frontend yourself. Look for posts by Craig Bradshaw and others in Erol's form to view examples.
As for the penalties, ups and downs are business as usual. Just because a few pages reappear in the search index that does not mean your stuff is safe in the future. The problem is that Erol's technique matches common spam patterns. The algo discovering a JS redirect may not always be able to judge intent properly. Comparisons of page contents can fail for so many reasons depending on the individual design of a store. Also, if Google would give Erol victims the permission to cloak, guess what a gazillion of very smart spammers would do? Exactly, they would imitate Erol's footsteps and flood the search index with crap.
Erol says that you should optimize the crawlable "x-page" for the engines, because SE crawlers will never see the other URL where the contents are put client sided. Well, this advice is a little bit questionable in the eyes of a search engine, because that's exactly what the spammers do with deceitful intent. I've read what their so called SEO experts say, and honestly I was shocked that everybody seems to believe in their weird interpretation of SE friendliness.
Long story short, making use of this particular Erol feature puts your business at risk. Frames are not great but not penalized. JS redirects / cloaking OTOH is clearly highlighted as a no-no in Google's guidelines, so it seems logical to me not to cloak.
> I just found the threads here on the subject of Erol and I'll just say > at the start I'm no blinkered Erol Robot as I like to think of them ;)
> However, I do have a question.
> Our site suffered, as many other Erol stores did around the same time > (Feb 23rd and onwards). Initially we lost around 20 indexed pages in > one day. This accelerated until at our lowest we had 6 indexed pages.
> Since about 2 weeks ago we're slowly seeing re-indexing - currently we > have around 48 pages indexed and for some product specific search > terms we now rank again at the #1 position.
> So, my question is, if it is right that Google is penalising Erol > sites for re-directs then why would we be seeing this re-indexing?
> As I say I'm no Erol blinkered fan and we're already taking steps > which include moving to other software but I have spent a lot of the > past month trying to find a hypothesis that explains what happened/ > what might happen in the near term future.
Thanks for the replies thus far and I see what you mean about the instability of the rankings - I've seen this happen before with our site - around the time of the Big Daddy update etc.
Unfortunately while I'm very interested in techy stuff I always feel I don't know 'quite' enough - I've largely taught myself as I've gone along.
So, another question if I may :)
Am I correct in thinking that if I create some basic html pages, upload them to our domain and then start linking them into our Erol pages that those pages have a chance of being better crawled and therefore indexed.
For example, we sell many many different types of cake tins (I hope it's ok to say that here?) and it would be relatively easy for me to put together some basic content about the different types, what they're used for and how to select the best one for your needs. This page could then I assume have links to our products within Erol without themselves being penalised?
(PS: I've put my domain in my profile but won't post it here cos I'm not sure if it's allowed - you can tell I've been on 'other' SEO forums ;) )
Sure, post your URL - It's close to impossible to give exact advice when you can't see the site in question. :-)
What you mention is - if I understand it correctly - a GREAT IDEA that you really, really should follow up on. Adding great and unique content to a site is always a good idea. This is especially true when you have a shop which often has minimal content on the pages and which might even have content which is repeated on other sites (eg when you are selling the same products).
Three items that really make a lot of sense on ecommerce sites are (in my opinion):
- Articles; good, unique articles. You know your products, you know how they're used - let people know. Don't take articles that are published elsewhere and just republish them, though. The idea behind this is that people might be looking for say a good cake recipe - if they find your site through your articles (assuming you have a good recipe :-)) they might either link to your article (because they like it) or even continue to look around and find your shop, perhaps through links in your articles (eg "this cake is really easy to bake with our super-nonstick cake pan[link]").
- A blog: Sometimes articles can only go so far. Sometimes current events need to be recorded and sometimes you will have people who say "I like this site but don't want to buy just yet". If they can for example subscribe to your blog's RSS feed, you could post about new products, new articles, changes in the whole product-environment, sales, stock-offloading, etc. This content will also get indexed and people might also find your site through it.
- User created content: Let your users create content for you. Let them write (or at least submit) articles to your site for you to put online. Let the users rate the products (in a way that search engines can find), let them write comments about the products, articles and blog postings. Your return visitors are the ones that can best get new visitors to convert to customers. Give them the chance to be a star, to be famous on your site (and make sure that the search engines find out).
All of these pages would best be integrated as much as possible into your shop (as long as they're static HTML pages without redirects :-)). No matter where people come in to your site, they should be able to find all of your content as easy as possible. In addition, the broader your "base" of different page types, the less likely a single change in the search engines will remove all your traffic (eg if your shop is removed in the search engines but your articles are still indexed, then that traffic might still bring in enough sales, indirectly at least).
Good luck :-)
John
PS these general website/marketing/business issues are usually a bit out of place here where everyone is "just" working on getting and remaining indexed (and ranking)... I've found that cre8asiteforums.com is a really nice place where you can get a lot of advice on the whole range of issues that a website owner has to work on.
posting URLs and examples is very much appreciated, it makes things easier. You don't need to widgetize your questions.
Creating informative pages outside the erol sphere makes sound sense. I'd even disallow urls like /erol /x and so on in your robots.txt. That clearly tells Google that you've no questionable intentions. Use Google's cool robots.txt validator to experiment and find the right syntax to exclude Erol-URLs only!
To get these pages ranking, you should create a non-Erol home page too, and link these new pages from there. You can link to the excluded shopping cart URLs, that's fine. Then promote the hell out of the new stuff.
Perhaps you have to change the shopping cart a bit to make sure that links from the core shopping cart back to the external pages work properly. Don't rely on JS functionality working with the browser's history alone, you can check the HTTP referrer (be aware of the r-typo in the variable: HTTP_REFERER, and note that some users surf without referrer ...) too or/and store the user's clickstream in the cookie/ session variables. Perhaps you can store the external pages in the database table .... That's not Erol specific, check your manuals for details.
> Thanks for the replies thus far and I see what you mean about the > instability of the rankings - I've seen this happen before with our > site - around the time of the Big Daddy update etc.
> Unfortunately while I'm very interested in techy stuff I always feel I > don't know 'quite' enough - I've largely taught myself as I've gone > along.
> So, another question if I may :)
> Am I correct in thinking that if I create some basic html pages, > upload them to our domain and then start linking them into our Erol > pages that those pages have a chance of being better crawled and > therefore indexed.
> For example, we sell many many different types of cake tins (I hope > it's ok to say that here?) and it would be relatively easy for me to > put together some basic content about the different types, what > they're used for and how to select the best one for your needs. This > page could then I assume have links to our products within Erol > without themselves being penalised?
> (PS: I've put my domain in my profile but won't post it here cos I'm > not sure if it's allowed - you can tell I've been on 'other' SEO > forums ;) )
Cathy, I totally agrees; what Sebastian have mentioned above. You don't have to change your software but try to find a workaround for your problem as you already invested lot of time learning the know-how about it. And who knows what all baggage of problems will come along with the new platform. Don't give up on anything until you try everything to fix it but that doesn't mean you have stick with it forever.
> posting URLs and examples is very much appreciated, it makes things > easier. You don't need to widgetize your questions.
> Creating informative pages outside the erol sphere makes sound sense. > I'd even disallow urls like /erol /x and so on in your robots.txt. > That clearly tells Google that you've no questionable intentions. Use > Google's cool robots.txt validator to experiment and find the right > syntax to exclude Erol-URLs only!
> To get these pages ranking, you should create a non-Erol home page > too, and link these new pages from there. You can link to the excluded > shopping cart URLs, that's fine. Then promote the hell out of the new > stuff.
> Perhaps you have to change the shopping cart a bit to make sure that > links from the core shopping cart back to the external pages work > properly. Don't rely on JS functionality working with the browser's > history alone, you can check the HTTP referrer (be aware of the r-typo > in the variable: HTTP_REFERER, and note that some users surf without > referrer ...) too or/and store the user's clickstream in the cookie/ > session variables. Perhaps you can store the external pages in the > database table .... That's not Erol specific, check your manuals for > details.
> HTH > Sebastian
> On Mar 27, 3:49 pm, Cathyy wrote:
> > Thanks for the replies thus far and I see what you mean about the > > instability of the rankings - I've seen this happen before with our > > site - around the time of the Big Daddy update etc.
> > Unfortunately while I'm very interested in techy stuff I always feel I > > don't know 'quite' enough - I've largely taught myself as I've gone > > along.
> > So, another question if I may :)
> > Am I correct in thinking that if I create some basic html pages, > > upload them to our domain and then start linking them into our Erol > > pages that those pages have a chance of being better crawled and > > therefore indexed.
> > For example, we sell many many different types of cake tins (I hope > > it's ok to say that here?) and it would be relatively easy for me to > > put together some basic content about the different types, what > > they're used for and how to select the best one for your needs. This > > page could then I assume have links to our products within Erol > > without themselves being penalised?
> > (PS: I've put my domain in my profile but won't post it here cos I'm > > not sure if it's allowed - you can tell I've been on 'other' SEO > > forums ;) )- Hide quoted text -
We were in the same boat with Erol, but fortunately had already decided to change packages before we were banned (yep we were completely banned).
My advice is twofold: 1: I would move away from erol. 2: It does mean you would have to learn new software, so buy a second domain, build the site on that domain and run it as a different site. Then when you feel ready switch your current site over to the new software.
> Cathy, I totally agrees; what Sebastian have mentioned above. You > don't have to change your software but try to find a workaround for > your problem as you already invested lot of time learning the know-how > about it. And who knows what all baggage of problems will come along > with the new platform. Don't give up on anything until you try > everything to fix it but that doesn't mean you have stick with it > forever.
> Good day all!
> On Mar 27, 7:28 pm, Sebastian wrote:
> > Cathyy,
> > posting URLs and examples is very much appreciated, it makes things > > easier. You don't need to widgetize your questions.
> > Creating informative pages outside theerolsphere makes sound sense. > > I'd even disallow urls like /erol/x and so on in your robots.txt. > > That clearly tells Google that you've no questionable intentions. Use > > Google's cool robots.txt validator to experiment and find the right > > syntax to excludeErol-URLs only!
> > To get these pages ranking, you should create a non-Erolhome page > > too, and link these new pages from there. You can link to the excluded > > shopping cart URLs, that's fine. Then promote the hell out of the new > > stuff.
> > Perhaps you have to change the shopping cart a bit to make sure that > > links from the core shopping cart back to the external pages work > > properly. Don't rely on JS functionality working with the browser's > > history alone, you can check the HTTP referrer (be aware of the r-typo > > in the variable: HTTP_REFERER, and note that some users surf without > > referrer ...) too or/and store the user's clickstream in the cookie/ > > session variables. Perhaps you can store the external pages in the > > database table .... That's notErolspecific, check your manuals for > > details.
> > HTH > > Sebastian
> > On Mar 27, 3:49 pm, Cathyy wrote:
> > > Thanks for the replies thus far and I see what you mean about the > > > instability of the rankings - I've seen this happen before with our > > > site - around the time of the Big Daddy update etc.
> > > Unfortunately while I'm very interested in techy stuff I always feel I > > > don't know 'quite' enough - I've largely taught myself as I've gone > > > along.
> > > So, another question if I may :)
> > > Am I correct in thinking that if I create some basic html pages, > > > upload them to our domain and then start linking them into ourErol > > > pages that those pages have a chance of being better crawled and > > > therefore indexed.
> > > For example, we sell many many different types of cake tins (I hope > > > it's ok to say that here?) and it would be relatively easy for me to > > > put together some basic content about the different types, what > > > they're used for and how to select the best one for your needs. This > > > page could then I assume have links to our products withinErol > > > without themselves being penalised?
> > > (PS: I've put my domain in my profile but won't post it here cos I'm > > > not sure if it's allowed - you can tell I've been on 'other' SEO > > > forums ;) )- Hide quoted text -
