[Blackcat]

I thought l made a terrible mistake when redesigning the template l was paid for, the one of the weblog http://www.rolliblog.net. I thought that, using table to align the columns, the Google spider considered all pages without contents.

I think it did not happen.

The strange thing l noticed, anyway, is that Google indexes the alias (http://www.rolliblog.it) parked on this domain, and not the .net.
Same templates, same keywords.
One is up to date and the other is still one month ago in the cache.

Yahoo is completely correct: both the domains are indexed.

Considering that my customer would like to abandon the .it domain, do you have any suggestion to give me to improve the Google rate, or better, to make Google understand that there is another domain?

I already submitted the new site from the CPanel and from Google home... but nothing.

I think now l need the help of SuperTcHJim, l read all posts on Google he wrote!!!

[Deverill]

Hi BlackCat,
SuperTchJim isn't here but I'll help out the best I can.

The use of tables for alignment will not stop a site from being shown on Google. The very worst it can do is add more junk (<TR><TD></TD></TR> tags) so that your keywords and phrases are not as much of the whole picture as they would be without them. The only other thing is if you cram keywords into the table tags but I am sure that's not an issue for you.

The most likely cause of the one site disappearing is if Google sees two pages that look almost the same it will assume they are doorway pages and will choose only one to use in the results of searches. Usually it is the one with the most links to it but not necessarily. This is true of parked domains too, sometimes. Especially as in your case where you have links from other sites to both your addresses.

Currently you have 17 pages under the .net and 8650 pages under .it listed on Google. You also have your .net site linked on 14 other sites but the .it address is linked from 8770 other sites. This will make .it take higher place than .net.

You could change one page so it doesn't have the same content as the other and it should show up again. Remember, Google doesn't look much at colors and font sizes and such to see if they are alike, it just looks at the words on the page.

If you abandon the .it domain make sure you put a Permanent Redirect in the .htaccess so Google knows you moved and will transfer pagerank to the new page. Also, it is best if you have links from other sites if they change to the new address. With the redirect you will have time to complete this but one day you'll want them to point to the right page without the redirect.

Hope it helps!

[natimage]

Quote

The use of tables for alignment will not stop a site from being shown on Google. The very worst it can do is add more junk (<TR><TD></TD></TR> tags) so that your keywords and phrases are not as much of the whole picture as they would be without them. The only other thing is if you cram keywords into the table tags but I am sure that's not an issue for you.

Jim...are you saying that something like,

<td class="css">

compared to

<td bunch of junk, bunch of junk, bunch of junk>

makes a difference in, for example, in your site's keyword density?

[DarqFlare]

I imagine that will impact the density, yes... The more characters on a page, the less keyword density.

[Blackcat]

TCH-Jim, on Jun 3 2004, 08:53 PM, said:

If you abandon the .it domain make sure you put a Permanent Redirect in the .htaccess so Google knows you moved and will transfer pagerank to the new page. Also, it is best if you have links from other sites if they change to the new address. With the redirect you will have time to complete this but one day you'll want them to point to the right page without the redirect.

Hope it helps!

It helped a lot!

I do not absolutely know how to put that redirect in ht.access.... uhm...
But one thing l did today, was to redirect all 404 pages to the .net homepage: l noticed all posts number were different and, most of all, the one indexed with the .it were all in CFM, so were no longer available.

Hope to see results soon, or Rolli will kill me!

[Deverill]

Well, it's not as easy with parked domains as it would be with separate domains. In fact, here's a newsletter that Google turned up that talks about one way to do it: www.highrankings.com/issue060.htm#seo

If you try it while it is parked you'll create a loop redirecting your real site to your real site and it could get ugly.

Hopefully someone else will have another way to do it. Maybe the techs can do something on their end too? It's outside my knowledge base.

[lubox.com]

Blackcat, on Jun 4 2004, 06:14 PM, said:

I do not absolutely know how to put that redirect in ht.access.... uhm...
But one thing l did today, was to redirect all 404 pages to the .net homepage

Google will not follow 404 error pages, you rmethod works for human but not for spiders.

The 301 method works better, a very bsaic index.php redirecting the spider and sending them a 301 eroor shoudl works better, even if they do not like it much too.. In fact the redirection SE like the most, it the stupid javascript ones. Cos' they will usually index the link on that pages before they are redirected...

HTH

Ludo
P.S.: good night folks, I really need some sleep now

[Boojum]

TCH-Jim, on Jun 3 2004, 06:53 PM, said:

SuperTchJim isn't here but I'll help out the best I can.

Have I the honor of addressing mild-mannered TCH guru ClarkKent?

[dsdemmin]

Blackcat how long ago did you add the .net domain and park the .it domain?

I have a feeling that Google's information for the domains is not 'up to date'. A parked domain is a legitimate redirect that Google will identify and thus both domains will possess the same PageRank and backlinks. Your URLs our obviously out of sink thus it is should be just a matter of time.

As SuperJim stated, this is not a table issue. The only affect tables have from an SEO point of view is what text gets read first (i.e. spiders read top down, left to right). So a left column will be read before a center column. This is why I have always recommended menus to reside within a right column (the right side of a page) if one is using table formatting. This way spiders read body text before links (i.e. first words read within a page are valued higher).

Tracy:

No HTML code (accept Meta tags and comments) will affect rankings. When one talks of keyword density is only consists of body text and actually not even all the body text (stop words don't count [e.g. and]. Thus <td> tags have no affect. Make sense?

In conclusion, no redirect is required for a parked domain. Also, your comment "Yahoo is completely correct: both the domains are indexed." is a bit misleading. There are many companies that have 100's of URL that point to one site I certainly would not want all those indexed (only the most relevant one). This is what Jim was eluding too. The thing now is to be very consistent in having other pages linked to the 'URL of choice' (i.e. .net).

Hope this helps and good luck.

[Blackcat]

Dsdemmin, l think it was just a matter of time.
As l wrote, l put a redirect on 403 page, linking to the homepage of .net.
In two days l saw the rebirth of the domain from 27th to 1st page of same research.
And my customer was pretty happy (and stopped bothering me for the templates ).

Another dummy question...

A weblog page, in google cache, is relating to 13th March, even if it has had lots of more comments. Is there any "strange way" to speed up the re-caching, i.e. clicking on it or something else?

I must admit Google is becoming my worst nightmare...

[dsdemmin]

Quote

A weblog page, in google cache, is relating to 13th March, even if it has had lots of more comments. Is there any "strange way" to speed up the re-caching, i.e. clicking on it or something else?

Most weblogs get visited frequently because the content is frequently being changed/added. However a March 13 cache date would suggest that the one you are referring too is not as popular with Google.

Get some fresh links pointing specifically to the weblog. The more Google 'sees' it the better.

Good luck.