help with getting indexed

[eMEraLdwPn]

a few months ago i built a lyrics site that allows users to submit lyrics and view lyrics, all run through php scripts and mysql. the site was listed on google, but got basically no traffic because i was told it wouldn't show up in searches since every pages aside from the main page uses queries with a ? in the url. the other day i read one of chris's article that went over how to create static pages, so i changed all the links from viewartist.php?id=## to viewartist.php/## and so on for all the other pages. i then made a few more adjustments to make the urls more meaningful (still in the process of doing this) but in the middle of this, i noticed my site was reindexed in google. still, none of the new static pages were indexed, just the main page. i then reread the article and noticed that it said google DOES index pages that use a ? in the url. so, why are none of my pages indexed then? what can i do to get them indexed?

the site url is http://www.lyricallysquared.com/ feel free to take a look. thanks for any help

[Mike]

Google doesn't index pages with id etc in. Try manually submitting to google again.

[chromate]

Also, a lot of your URL's are like:

http://www.lyricallysquared.com/viewartist.php/The%20Beautiful%20Mistake

Try making them like:

http://www.lyricallysquared.com/viewartist/The%20Beautiful%20Mistake

ie, get rid of the .php part. Use htaccess to do this. There's an article on this site called something like "Search Engine Friendly URL's" That will explain all you need to know to get your site crawled completely.

[incka]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/


That's the article chromate was referring to...

[eMEraLdwPn]

i just went with the first method before, but it seems like the third method is basically the same just removing the .php, so it shouldn't take too long to convert everything...

so if i remove all the .php from my files and resubmit, chances are it would index my entire site rather than just the main page? is that all i'll need to do?

[Mike]

Yeah, I think so.

[eMEraLdwPn]

i changed everything over and have submitted the site to google about once every 3 days for the past 10 days... i finally noticed the googlebot visited my site early this morning, but only registered about 20 hits. if it were going to index my entire site, it would be about 30,000 hits, so it's come nowhere close to entirely indexing my site... or any fraction of it.. is there any reason for that? or anything i can do about it? i was reading about robots.txt, but seems that's more to tell it where not to go rather than where it should go....

[chromate]

It may take a while before google decides to completely crawl your site. 20 pages on a first crawl is pretty good. Give it time.

[eMEraLdwPn]

should i keep submitting it every few days until it completely crawls it?

[incka]

Thats one think I hate about the spider... It doesn't always do the whole site...

[chromate]

Originally posted by eMEraLdwPn
should i keep submitting it every few days until it completely crawls it?

It wouldn't hurt. I probably would. But make sure you put effort into building backlinks. They really help!

[eMEraLdwPn]

i messaged a few other lyrics sites asking to exchange links, but none replied... i also submitted to a free few directories but haven't been listed in any yet

if all the pages i had were indexed, would each one count as a backlink to the main page since there's a link on every page?

[chromate]

Yeah they would. They'd only show up in google if they had a PR of 4 or more. But they would still be counted. Building backlinks is very hard. Especially when the site is new and has little PR. Once you build some PR getting people involved in link exchanges will be easier. From their point of view, at the moment you have very little to offer (no traffic and no PR). Just keep working at it. It will pay off in the end and it will get easier all the time.

[MarkB]

Do you allow lyrics to be grouped by artist? If so, contact band sites that don't have lyrics posted, and ask if they'd be willing to link to those sections (for example, a Beatles website, linking to a page containing links to all your Beatles lyrics).

Backlinks + deep URLs to encourage spidering.

[eMEraLdwPn]

yeah, every artist's lyrics are found at http://www.lyricallysquared.com/viewartist/(artist_name)

[MarkB]

Then you're set -- you can submit artist lyric pages to Yahoo under their lyric categories. This will (should) get you quality, targetted traffic.

You can contact band websites, asking if they'll link to the lyric pages (in return for a link from yourself). This will show you as a resource to be trusted. Official bandsites tend to have good PR, because they have all the fansites linking to them. (I've been managing music websites since 1999, including some major names, should you think I'm talking out of my a**).

IMO, linking - and getting links - from other lyric sites will just dilute the quality of your traffic. Stand apart, and focus on links that the other sites don't bother about.

[eMEraLdwPn]

i submitted a bunch of the artist pages to zeal today since i figure i'll get listed in there a lot faster than i'll get listed under yahoo

if i managed to get about 100 artists listed in the zeal & yahoo directories, would it amount to much anyway? it wouldn't count as backlinks to the main site, so all it will really result in is some more traffic just because more people will find the site, right? assuming i get listed... i've almost always had bad experiences with trying to get listed somewhere :P

[MarkB]

If you're listed, it will bring in visitors to your site. You may then get links from fansites, which will count as back links and increase visitors and (hopefully) PR.

It all helps.

[eMEraLdwPn]

something that just occurred to me is that it seems like google only indexed the links on my sidemenu, which all use absolute urls... the rest of my site runs off relative urls... could that be why it didn't index the rest? i just changed a few pages to absolute urls and resubmitted to see if it has any effect..

[eMEraLdwPn]

oh yeah, and thanks for all your help so far =)

[eMEraLdwPn]

i submitted a few artist pages to zeal, and it took a little while to get listed in there... then i was added to looksmart and nothing much was happening still

then today i got about 100 unique hits (opposed to 2 or 3 per day =P) from msn.com because whenever you search for (band name) lyrics i would be the #1 site since i was the only one in the web directory... so i submitted about 20 more artist pages to zeal, and then noticed a message on msn.com that said "Notice: Starting in mid-January, 2004, MSN will no longer display search results from the Web Directory."

*sigh*... i can never catch a break... and still no luck with getting indexed by google... =(