Wow! What a debacle I just went through with one of my client’s websites — designed in WordPress — and getting it indexed in Google.

The client had a site that had been taken down for a few months — no content.  His previous site was a template site and didn’t have much content.  We decided that we would redo the site on the WordPress platform (as I do all my client sites) as I am able to get some really good Google ‘love’ for targeted keywords pretty quickly (I’ve actually had one client go from zero to first page in two weeks for 13 out of 30 keywords, and on the first page of Google for 25 of the 30 keywords).

To do this, I obviously have to have good on-page content, but furthermore, we need to really be sure to have the right plugins in place.  I use the XML Sitemap plugin and PC Robots.txt to be sure I ‘m creating the right stuff that Google likes for proper indexing.  I have never had an issue with any client sites with these plugins.

Now for the fun part …

I set this site up as a ‘working’ site as a subsite of this site (dynamicmarketingpartners.com/subsite) and installed WordPress there.  I set the Privacy to ‘do not index’ so that the subsite didn’t register in Google.  I did the whole install, completed the site, and then moved it over to the client’s actual site using ManageWP (an awesome program to manage multiple WordPress blogs).  Everything looked good.

We were doing a comprehensive SEO program with lots of content and lots of links being build.  Again, this typically results in near immediate results for clients (or at least lots of positive upwards movement).  For this client, nothing was happening,and I was confused.  I thought that it could have been due to several things:  possibly I left the Robots.txt file open and did’t block the subsite, so I was getting dinged for duplicate content; or, the site was somehow ‘sandboxed’ by Google due to being dead for a while.  I was really confused.

I started digging deeper into the site and looked at the Google Webmaster tools.  I updated all the Sitemaps and found that it said that it was getting blocked by the Robots.txt file  I went back into the site and when I went to regenerate the sitemap, there was an error saying that the site was being restricted by the Robots.txt file and I had to adjust the privacy settings to correct.  I clicked the link for the privacy settings and there was a radio button for ‘Allow search engines to index this site’ or ‘Ask search engines not to index this site’.  The ‘not’ button was activated (not sure why, but it was).  So, I simply changed to ‘allow’ and clicked save.   However, this didn’t save.  It kept kicking me back to saying ‘not’.  I couldn’t understand why.

I searched and found several forums talking about why this could happen and most of them dealt with people having their Robots.txt file in a folder other than the root.  That wasn’t my case.  I looked at the http://subsite.xml sitemap and it was there.  I looked at http://subsite.com/robots.txt file and it was there and everything was set ok.  I couldn’t figure out why my privacy settings wouldn’t change.

I went into the database (via MyPhpAdmin) and searched for ‘disallow’ and changed every instance to ‘allow’ – thinking this would catch any deep-seeded robots.txt restrictions.  Still no luck.

I went into the hosting (GoDaddy hosting) and checked on the redirects to be sure that http://subsite.com and http://www.subsite.com were the same (it was all set).

I went back to Webmaster tools and looked what as was coming up.  Still blocked.

Back to the admin panel on WordPress.  I looked at the Settings — General and the site was set for http://subsite.com.  I went back to Google Webmaster Tools and re-ran the sitemap.  Still blocked.  I then clicked on the link for the sitemap it was pulling and found that it was looking at http://www.subsite.com/sitemap.xml.

What I found is that since the default site was set for http://subsite.com (no www) the sitemap defaulted there, but GWT was looking for the www version.  I went into Settings — General and changed the site to http://www.subsite.com.  I then ran the sitemap building plugins and checked them with Webmaster tools.  STILL not being allowed by Robots.txt.  I disabled the Robots.txt plugin, thinking that something was glitching there.

Then, as I was going through all pages of the settings, I found it — in the ‘Reading’ settings page — a checkbox that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.  It was checked.  Apparently THIS is the checkbox that sets the Privacy Settings that I couldn’t get changed.

After unchecking that box, saving, waiting about 3 minutes, and then resubmitting my sitemap though Google Webmaster Tools, the site is being indexed.

Wow … what an ordeal.  Glad it’s fixed.

Do you have any tips on WordPress?  Please share them here.

 

That one company mentioned? It happens to be mine. Early on, much wasn’t being spent on marketing simply because the funds weren’t available. Some dabbling was done with the usual suspects: the Yellow Pages, online ads, etc. None seemed to do more to build my brand online. So now, five years later, surprisingly nothing is being invested in marketing yet enough was earned to profit and expand. Intrigued? Read on.

Unfair Advantage

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From Small Business Trends

How One Company Spent Zero on Marketing

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After more than two years, and a few important concessions from Google, the Czech Republic is letting the company resume its Street View service. As Czech Position reports, Google has agreed to several conditions put forth by the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection: Google will take photos…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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On Wednesday, Feb 1, 2012, we published an article discussing some changes StumbleUpon made during their recent redesign which removed source links from their content pages and forced all users to view content from the site through an iframed toolbar, which they could not close if they were logged…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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The opinions on what makes a form or Web application user friendly may vary but most everyone dislikes Captcha fields. Some Captcha’s are so difficult to decipher they actually increase form and page abandonment. Along with the freedom the Internet provides humans, it is unfortunately humans who…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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Optimizing Keywords and Negatives is a task I recommend to my clients that they do regularly. In this How To, I will include some real-world experience along with the basics of how to use the AdWords Search Term View to optimize keywords and negatives. What Is Search Terms View? The AdWords Search…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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The Rolling Stones proudly sang, “Time is on my side, yes it is.” These days, time seems to be an adversary that everyone is fighting, especially when it comes to social media and small business. Unlike large corporations, small businesses do not have the ability to hire teams of individuals to monitor and respond to customer service issues on social media sites. So what’s a small business to do? Matt Trifiro joins Brent Leary to offer a solution.

*Read More

From Small Business Trends

Matt Trifiro of Desk.com: Meeting Customer Service Expectations in a Social World

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by Jennifer Cario

(If you are new to Pinterest and don’t already have an account, make sure to read part one in this series.)

Now that you’ve gotten youself up and running with a Pinterest account, it’s time to put it to use to start collecting ideas, links and pictures. Remember, Pinterest is a powerful online filing system that gives you visual access to the things you might wish to use down the road. Back in part one we talked about setting up some topical boards to sort the “pins” you find. Today we’re going to talk about how to find those pins.

Browsing Your Friends’ Pins and Repinning

The absolute easiest way to find pins (and the way most people get started) is by looking though the feed produced for you by your friends’ activity and “repinning” their pins. A repin is the Pinterest equivalent of a Twitter retweet or a Facebook share. When you log in to Pinterest, your friends’ activity feed is the first thing that pops up.

You can scroll through these listings to see if anything strikes your fancy. If it does, you have one of two options.

The first is to hover your mouse over it and wait for the Repin, Like and Comment options to pop up. Clicking the like button will add your vote to the mix right there on the page. Clicking the comment button will add a comment window to the bottom of the listing and clicking the Repin button will pop up a screen designed to let you pin the item to your own boards. It’s important to note you can also check the Facebook and Twitter boxes in this window to automatically share your pin there as well.

You can select the category you wish to pin it to from the drop down menu or create a new one right there in the menu. You can also choose to pin it with the existing description, or write your own. Once you’ve hit submit, the pin will be added to your category and will show up in the streams of users who follow you.

Your other option when you see a pin you are interested in is to click on the image itself. This will take you to the actual pin listing page, which looks like this:

Apart from getting a larger picture and a full description plus comments on this page, you also get some interesting information to help you dig deeper with your Pinning habits. At the bottom of the listing, you’ll notice three key areas. “Pinned onto the board,” “Originally Pinned by,” and “Pinned from.”

The first one tells you what board the person who pinned it placed it in. The thinking here is that if you like this pin, you may like the other pins they’ve collected on that topic. It will also give you some thumbnail snapshots of other pins from that board to check out. Below that, you’ll find a link to the person who originally found the post and added it to Pinterest. Again, chances are high you may want to consider following this person as well, since you like the content they added. Finally, the “pinned from” section will give you a full page showing the other pins that have been added from that site.

This can be an excellent way to find a new site to visit and even more ideas to pin.

Finding Pins by Topic

One of my favorite ways to use Pinterest is to browse the pins being added by all members to specific categories. If you look at the top of the page when you are logged in to Pinterest, you’ll notice a link that reads “Everything.”

Click on this link and you’ll get a drop down menu that allows you to select a category. Select your category and you’ll be taken to a real time feed of the most recent pins added to that category. (There are also links to view the latest video pins, the most popular pins and a breakdown of product pins by price.)

This is one of the things that makes Pinterest such an addictive time killer and that keeps people on the site for so long. In fact, the average time on site for a Pinterest user in the month of November last year was 88 minutes. Making it the third most “sticky” social media site behind Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes), according to Billboard.

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In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Bing Drink In A Glass: Image via Flickr. Behind The Scenes On President…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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Several members of Congress continued to express reservations about Google’s new privacy policy after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with one House member saying that Google’s handling of sensitive medical searches may violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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