Help with Google. IT guys please help.

[BeerWars]

Long story short.

My mom has a Calligraphy business. She is not tech savvy so she traded with a guy a few years ago some wedding invitations in exchange for the creation and hosting of a website for her.

Fast-forward to today. He notified her that she needed to host her site because he was changing domain names (which she has through Go-Daddy.com). The problem is that when you search Google, the old site comes up as the #1 item; and the new site does not show up at all.

So it looks like with Google Webmaster tools you can "verify" both old and new sites and notify them that way that the site has changed domains. Unfortunately we will need to have him upload files to server, and he has already changed the domain name (so I am not even sure it will load up properly cause the link has the old domain name). I have already verified the godaddy.com account.

Is there an easier way to do this? How long does it take for Google to "crawl" new sites?

 

[smelltheglove]

the deep crawl supposedly happens once a month....but they say they do smaller crawls all the time. But yeah basically, a site is going to be hosted off a server...and domain name is just a shortcut name for the server's address (these can be changed anytime). Why are you changing domain names? You should be able to transfer the name to a new server host...I may be confused by your post though.

 

[BeerWars]

the deep crawl supposedly happens once a month....but they say they do smaller crawls all the time. But yeah basically, a site is going to be hosted off a server...and domain name is just a shortcut name for the server's address (these can be changed anytime). Why are you changing domain names? You should be able to transfer the name to a new server host...I may be confused by your post though.

I don't know much about all this stuff. I am her IT guy when the water gets really murky. lol

The guy was hosting for free on his existing server. So it was just a page on his site. When you typed tampacalligraphy.com it would go to www.sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy/index.html He changed servers and told her he wasn't going to maintain anymore. She was page rank #1 before.

Now she has it at godaddy and it is just www.tampacalligraphy.com and it doesn't show up on Google. She is getting killed because she got tons of hits from google and now she isnt getting any. Just trying to get google to recognize the migration.

Make sense?

 

[wreals]

So, you used to type in http://www.tampacalligraphy.com/ and it would redirect to http://www.sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy/index.html?

Does he still own http://www.sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy/index.html? If so, ask the guy to put a 301 redirect to the http://www.tampacalligraphy.com/. That will tell google to pass the link love to the domain.

Also, you need to get your site map submitted to google, so it knows what to crawl.

Third, that site is an image. You need text on the page, so the robots know what to crawl. I didn't look at the header but do you have a site description and keywords in there?

I just took another look.

I'm surprised she ranked at all for "tampa calligraphy". See if you can get him to put in the 301 redirect.

Lastly, you can juice your SEO by link buying to an extent and getting other sites that rank well for your keyword terms to link to you.

 

[BeerWars]

Thanks for the reply.

So, you used to type in http://www.tampacalligraphy.com/ and it would redirect to http://www.sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy/index.html?

Yes, that is correct. Or if you googled "Tampa Calligraphy" it would show up as the sparklab.

Does he still own http://www.sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy/index.html? If so, ask the guy to put a 301 redirect to the http://www.tampacalligraphy.com/. That will tell google to pass the link love to the domain.

To be honest - I don't know. I believe it is the same physical servers. But the domain is now tourwrist.com I don't know how that would affect everything.

Also, you need to get your site map submitted to google, so it knows what to crawl.

In the process of doing this now.

Third, that site is an image. You need text on the page, so the robots know what to crawl. I didn't look at the header but do you have a site description and keywords in there?

Well Ill be damed - I didn't even know it was an image. I had nothing to do with this. LOL I'll take note of that.

I just took another look.

I'm surprised she ranked at all for "tampa calligraphy". See if you can get him to put in the 301 redirect.

Lastly, you can juice your SEO by link buying to an extent and getting other sites that rank well for your keyword terms to link to you.

I'll work on the 301 redirect. That will just send everyone to the new site? Sounds like that will essentially do what we want it to do. I dont know how she got ranked - I think maybe because she is on a ton of bridal sites that list the address. But I have no idea.

The last webpage I made was in college for a computer science class. No google, we just emailed the Prof our www.

Thanks again for the reply - I really appreciate it!

 

[smelltheglove]

oops was trying to edit

ask the guy to put a 301 redirect to the http://www.tampacalligraphy.com/. That will tell google to pass the link love to the domain.

yeah was going to say pretty much same thing....

the site is just a big picture so your SEO optimization is going to be pretty much limited...you do have the picture ALT=Tampa calligraphy so the google spider will eventually find that...(pretty much why your ranked #1 since your the only Tampa Calligraphy)

If you know any HTML...I suggest putting in more META tags (description and keywords) to allow the Google crawlers to have more of a description to index. "Supposedly" this gets the spiders going quicker...along with hits from google toolbar

You can also verify sites through google webmaster with the META Verification method once you have those up, so you dont have to upload a whole site...

at the end of the day you do not want to depend on this guy to keep a redirect up to your site...

 

[BeerWars]

oops was trying to edit



yeah was going to say pretty much same thing....

the site is just a big picture so your SEO optimization is going to be pretty much limited...you do have the picture ALT=Tampa calligraphy so the google spider will eventually find that...(pretty much why your ranked #1 since your the only Tampa Calligraphy)

If you know any HTML...I suggest putting in more META tags (description and keywords) to allow the Google crawlers to have more of a description to index. "Supposedly" this gets the spiders going quicker...along with hits from google toolbar

You can also verify sites through google webmaster with the META Verification method once you have those up, so you dont have to upload a whole site...

at the end of the day you do not want to depend on this guy to keep a redirect up to your site...

I know nothing about web design. But my mom knows that I am VERY resourceful and am able to figure things out that I have no prior experience with.

I'll get working on the tags tomorrow. I am sure I am going to be forever in charge of this site once it gets back to being functional. So I would rather do this right the first time and never tinker with it again. I wish I could just report this to the spiders. That would be too easy.

I don't want to depend on this guy at all. As I understand it, if I can verify through google that old site is my site (there are a few hoops that I need his cooperation with) I can tell google that we have changed the site address because the new godaddy addy is verified. But I have to wait for this guy to do some things. Hopefully he will get a jump on things so I can get this task off my plate.

Thanks for the response!

 

[BeerWars]

Email from the old host today.

The instructions you sent say to put the file at sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy, but this is not where your site is hosted anymore. It is hosted directly at tampacalligraphy.com. I put the <meta> tag from step 1 on the index page of your site, and I put the HTML file on your server from the second step 2, but if your Google webmaster account is trying to look at sparklabs.com/tampacalligraphy, it will not find it. This page does not exist anymore on our server and if we added it there, it would add to the search confusion.

You'll need to change that site and then click 'verify' on your Google webmaster page to get it to find your web page. Also, there will be a link to force google to crawl your page. Click that so it can put your website in its index properly.

Just do what he says and be done with it?