Google hates my website

www.michaelfornataro.c​om

Before I begin, I've searched about this topic to no avail. I'm running a squarespace site and I've also read hundreds of posts on their site about "why doesn't my site show up in google." All of my images are keyworded, named appropriately, and also tagged within SS. I have google analytics integrated within the site and also running google webmaster tools. I've submitted my website to be indexed and a .sitemap/xml and it says that the robots have crawled my site. Only 1 of 10 pages has been indexed by google.

It takes time. How else are you sending traffic to your site?

I'll have to admit I would not have believed you had I not been in the Googleplex and personally heard Sergey talking about how much Google hates your website.

Hi there,

Your site seems to be indexed as far as i can see.

If you copy and past into your Google search bar (not the url search bar): site:www.your url you will see the pages that are indexed. If it is a new site you may see some pages disappear early on and come back again from time to time. Re-fetching them usually brings them back.

It may be an idea to add some text to the pages with a heading. Eg the home page, welcome to xyz photography etc based in anytown and a description of the rest of your site with links to those pages. And on the fashion page for example some descriptive keywords and text. This will help google decide what your site is about and add towards page rank.

As above it may be a good idea to hire someone to do it for you. Here in the UK seo'ers usually charge around £15 per hour.

John

"But it's been a couple weeks now..."

In my experience it takes a bit more time than this.

to begin with you will likely need to pay for GoogleAds to get your name to popup on various searches. When I first started out that was the only way I could get my site to show up. After a couple years, I rank in the top 3 on most of the search criteria I want without Google Ads.

sometimes it takes money to make money.... Also if your website domain is recently new, you will be ranked very low for a while, as the age of the domain plays a part in your ranking.

i_am_cdn wrote in post #16723909
to begin with you will likely need to pay for GoogleAds to get your name to popup on various searches.

^^ This ^^

Google has claimed they don't let money influence what shows up in searches, however....

king. wrote in post #16723302
...All of my images are keyworded...

You probably mean IPTC. As far as I know Google doesn't take it to account yet.


You don't have any textual content on your website. So, in Google's eyes your site is blank (if you click "View Page Source" - you will see your site as Google sees it. Just HTML and scripts ).

If you search Michael Fornataro Photographer, you will find your site, since this keyword is in the title tag. Other than that, Google has not much information to use.

Things you should be doing:

• Tweet links to your website from time to time. Because twitter is one of the most popular sites on the planet, Google crawls it very frequently —much more frequently than they would crawl a small personal website. So, a link posted on Twitter is discovered by Google much more quickly than if you leave it up to Google to find your site and new pages on its own.
  
  
• Add more links to your website on your Flickr and any other sites you're part of.
  
  
• Get active on Google+ and set up google authorship for your blog.
  
  

carpetguy wrote in post #16723742
Hi there,

Your site seems to be indexed as far as i can see.

If you copy and past into your Google search bar (not the url search bar): site:www.your url you will see the pages that are indexed. If it is a new site you may see some pages disappear early on and come back again from time to time. Re-fetching them usually brings them back.

It may be an idea to add some text to the pages with a heading. Eg the home page, welcome to xyz photography etc based in anytown and a description of the rest of your site with links to those pages. And on the fashion page for example some descriptive keywords and text. This will help google decide what your site is about and add towards page rank.

As above it may be a good idea to hire someone to do it for you. Here in the UK seo'ers usually charge around £15 per hour.

John

From what I can see you've done nothing I would recommend, so I've no idea what SEO help you've been reading but it's not the stuff I read.

You have not added key words into the " meta description" box that squarespace has in the editing mode. You add at least 20 words that are unique to you and your work.

Right now, when I right click your page and view the source, It reads like a sentence,
it doesn't have to. Add a bunch of words that match your work. Just do it.

King, what are the goals for your website? to generate local clients or online visitors ?

also, your blog posting is very poorly optimized, and the way you just stuff the tag section full of keywords can be looked at negatively by the search engines and human visitors.

roofero wrote in post #16725346
You have not added key words into the " meta description" box that squarespace has in the editing mode. You add at least 20 words that are unique to you and your work.

Right now, when I right click your page and view the source, It reads like a sentence,
it doesn't have to. Add a bunch of words that match your work. Just do it.

Meta description shouldn't be just keywords. The goal of meta description is to best summarize a web page's content when listed in search results. It doesn't have any influence in ranking on most engines.

So, Michael has it right.

The general consensus seems to be that I need to add more content rich wording to my site..something I completely overlooked. In reality I just want my images to do the talking, but that really isn't the best way for Google to see my page.

roofero wrote in post #16725346
You have not added key words into the " meta description" box that squarespace has in the editing mode. You add at least 20 words that are unique to you and your work.

Right now, when I right click your page and view the source, It reads like a sentence,
it doesn't have to. Add a bunch of words that match your work. Just do it.

Can you point me in the direction of where this is? I have the meta description for google (shouldn't it read like a sentence?) and the import meta description box checked. As far as I know, those are the only areas I've found concerning meta. According to webmaster tools, these are the content keywords, which I'm not too sure how or why it's only these keywords.

BobbyM wrote in post #16725520
King, what are the goals for your website? to generate local clients or online visitors ?

also, your blog posting is very poorly optimized, and the way you just stuff the tag section full of keywords can be looked at negatively by the search engines and human visitors.

I'm the photographer for a pretty large magazine in Pittsburgh, so I'm not necessarily begging for clients. I just want my site available and searchable because Pittsburgh is chalk full of advertising agencies and some hire a lot of commercial freelance work.

As far as optimizing the blog, is there something you would recommend? I know I need to bust out more posts and really fill them with content pertaining to my site and work. I'll also keep the tagging in mind, I thought having all of those tags helped

Thanks for all of the help everyone!

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