“Help! Google Won’t Index My Blog!’’ - A Troubleshooter’s Checklist I

by: Joel Comm (from book;`Build A Website Fast`)

If you found with some of these related problems, check your blog with these common mistakes:

1. Does your blog use frames?
   Don’t put readable and indexable text into frames. Often Google will exlusively display the frame where the search phrase appears, virtually ignoring the rest of the frameset. Since search spiders have little regard for page layout, the result might not be too eye friendly.
2. Do other blog link to you?
   Sometimes, the search engines have no way of finding you if other (indexed) blog do not link to you. If you use the ‘Submit URL’ route, it might take months before googlebot decides to visit. In fact, it might not index your blog at all. Even if it does, you might not find your blog till someone types the exact domain name into the search engine.
   Get other blog to link you! Google want to know if your blog is really useful to potential searchers. One of the greatest factors in determining its value in your PageRank, which is calculated on the basis on how many sites link to you, as well as the relative PageRank of the blogs that link to you.
3. Are the backlinks coded in JavaScript?
   If you do have other blogs linking to you, make sure links are coded in HTML. Google cannot read links coded in javascript, Java applets or Macromedia Flash. Even an HTML link that opens in another browser window is invisible to google if it uses a Javascript or event handler. Similarly, links that point to a redirect page (which automatically forwards visitors to your blog) won’t be considered valid links to your blog.
4. Is your blog littered with “junk” code?
   Most blogs are designed with complex navigation systems, flash amination and other design clutter that adds reams of code to your page. Needless to say, all this jazz makes no sense to search spiders, which must navigate this ‘garbage’ before they get to the important meta tags or title tag.
   TIP; One way to get around this problem is to put your javascript in an external source, so that your actual blog or web page does not contain the code. The web browser can be instructed to pull the javascript code from the external source, the sameway it displays images from an external file.
   If you are serious about your search rangkings, clean up the junk. Junk hurts your rangkings !!!