PLEASE help a potter with a problem

[Graham Mercer]

I am a potter, not a developer, and I have tried to help out and create a website for our local community group but am having problems getting it to appear in search engines. Can anyone help explain what I have done wrong please?
I have tried a number of variations but nothing seems to make it index correctly. HELP!!
The url of the problem site is http://www.warrandyteneighbourhoodho....au/index.html
If you look at it in Google or Dogpile it indexes as :-

Relocate
Sorry, your browser does not support Java Script.

There is text on the front page, as well as links to a site map and the first internal page, but none of this is being "seen" by these search engines.

In my logs I can see that googlebot visits the index page every few days but it only ever returns the above information for the site. The log shows
66.249.64.198 - - [02/Nov/2004:13:17:56 +1100] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 24 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
66.249.64.198 - - [02/Nov/2004:13:17:56 +1100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 304 - "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

I notice that in the second line Googlebot gets a 304 code which I believe means nothing has changed, it always shows this no matter how I change the index page.

I have tried to figure this out for several weeks without success so it is time to seek some expert guidance.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!!!
Graham

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
i think its something to do with your index page. This URL is listed: http://www.warrandyteneighbourhoodho....au/index.html

but your home page isn't!

http://www.warrandyteneighbourhoodho...u/homepage.htm

For some reason the google bot is not indexing your entire site. Not sure why but i would drop the first index page altogether, then rename your homepage index.html and watch for the bot the next time, hopefully it will index the rest of your site.

[Graham Mercer]

Thanks for your help and suggestions.
I have removed the 'entry page' and made the first 'internal page' the index.html, it will be interesting to see if this makes any difference to how Google 'sees' it!
Cheers from Oz,
Graham

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
ok cool that page now has a pagerank of 3/10. This will be until the bot visits again. Currently you have 2 inbound links to this page. This will help with your google ranking.
Submit your site to www.dmoz.org this is a feeder search engine for google.

[Graham Mercer]

Thanks for your info. How did you determine the pagerank please?
Graham

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
this is only ment as a guide. Download and install the google toolbar, in the options select show pagerank. Every time you visit a page if that page is in google then the google toolbar with give the pagerank for that page.

[Graham Mercer]

Ribeye you have been very helpful, thanks so much for the assistance it is greatly appreciated.
Graham

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
no problem

Consider yourself at least half way there. Your site is on Google. Now you just have to start optomizing your site and then increase your backward links to gain more pagerank.