Need help getting pages indexed - QUICK!

[lindamoran]

I am Linda Moran, freelance writer and author of a new book. These boards have been very helpful to me. An important part of my marketing plan is for visitors to find my dieting book by typing their dieting problems into their search engine. I have some text-rich pages on my site that are about specific dieting problems which I wrote in April, but they're still not indexed in Google. Will some kind person look at my pages and brainstorm why they're not getting indexed? Any search experts out there? They are indexed in Yahoo. Thanks! The links are below.

Linda Moran

Compulsive Exercise (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/compulsive_exercise.html)
Compulsive Overeating (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/compulsive_overeating.html)
Diet Addiction (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/diet_addiction.html)
Emotional Eating (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/emotional_eating.html)
Low Carb Diets (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/low_carb.html)
Low Fat Diets (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/low_fat_diet.html)
Portion Control (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/portion_control.html)
Night Eating (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/night_eating_syndrome.html)
Stress Eating (http://www.betterwaypress.com/howtosurviveyourdiet/stress_and_eating.html)

[Hurstool]

Looks good overall. Clean code, nicely styled.

I believe I have read that you should not use the same word more than 3 times in your keywords. For example, in Portion Control, you have the word Portion 4 times, so I would consider getting rid of one of them.

I would also consider adding something along the lines of:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="Robots" content="All">
with an appropriate robots.txt file.

http://spider-food.net/ and www.searchenginewatch.com are both good additional sources of SEO info.

Check to see if you are listed in DMOZ - On the Google website it says:

If you are having difficulty getting listed in the Google index, you may want to consider submitting your site to Yahoo! or Netscape. You can submit to Yahoo! by visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. You can submit your site to Netscape's Open Directory Project (DMOZ) by visiting www.dmoz.org. Once your site is included in either of these directories, Google will often index your site within six to eight weeks.

Good luck, and give us an update when you can!

[mountainmad]

How are you linking to these pages?

Do you have a site map page that is linked from your home page and indexed by Google or do you have a page that you know is indexed and you can link to these pages from?

[lindamoran]

The site map is a good suggestion. I'm working on it as we speak. Any suggestions either for usability or for making it as search-friendly as possible? I'd like my site map to be a useable index for my visitors, but of course, I'd like it to further my search aims.

Linda

[lindamoran]

I finally caved, and shelled out the 300 bucks for a Yahoo Express Directory Entry because it's a good link. It worked. Within a few days, all those pages were indexed. They rank low, but that's another matter. Now I need relevant links.

This coulkd be proof that directory submissions help. However, I had also put up a site map at the same time, so maybe not such a pure experiment. The moral of the story? Maybe try a site map first. It's free.

Linda

www.betterwaypress.com (http://www.betterwaypress.com)
www.lindamoran.net (http://www.lindamoran.net)

[mountainmad]

Hi Linda

Just a thought, the site map should have the full URL of each page shown (and not just internal links).

I try to make it graphically interesting on sites I have although very few visitors go there anyway.

This example is just done with tables and a few arrows:
Bridal at Petticoatdreams site map (http://www.bridal.petticoatdreams.co.uk/Bridal%20petticoats.htm)

You might hate it? As I have said very few people look at site maps they are realy just an SEO tool for us lot.

[lindamoran]

Mountainmad -
Thank you for pointing that out. I should have realized it. Duh! (I like your site map.)

www.betterwaypress.com (http://www.betterwaypress.com)
www.lindamoran.net (http://www.lindamoran.net)

[kevinc]

I would definitely suggest linking to relevant websites in a similar niche as yours. There are always webmasters of smaller sites especially who are on the hunt for quality link partners such as yourself where their content would match yours. It takes a number of quality inbound links with page rank to help give your page rank a boost and that will in turn help your website's visibility on the keywords you are optimizing for. You can even consider some 3rd party applications to help you manage this since after a while it can become a bit unwieldy when managing all the links and checking to make sure yours are still on other websites (sometimes they get pulled
without your knowledge.) There are several choices but one that is popular is from Arelis.com -- you might want to check that out. It makes the whole process fairly easy to manage. Good luck with it!