Can SSI-html files influence the way Google indexes pages?

slainthe · #1 (**permalink**) 08-14-2004, 08:18 AM

First of all, thanks to everybody who helped me finding out the problem of www.whisky-distilleries.info
I applied some of the SEO techniques and the result is quite better now.
For instance, my site is now number 3 on Google.fr for the keyword "whisky", which is very good I guess.
On Google.com, it appears on the ninth page, which is not too good.
The pagerank has not yet been changed (I imagine this will happen soon, as I see the Google bots often (weekly) on my pages). I used to have 4/10 for my Fench pages. I do not really remember the pagerank for my English pages.
The ranking has fallen down to 2/10 for French, and 1/10 for the ENglish onces. This could explain the difference between google.fr and goole.com
My index page however has kept 4/10.

Here is now my new problem

My site is found easily on words contained in the title of the page or the name of the URL. So for instance, the words whisky, distillery, in combination with the name of a distillery gives very good results. But the rest of the page contents does not seem to be found anymore...
If I take a word string randomly on one of my pages, Google does not find my site anymore.
Example: "Legal distillation of whisky is rather recent" is one of the first sentences on the page http://www.whisky-distilleries.info/Histoire_EN.shtml, and typing this sentence Google does not find my page. Google finds lots of other pages, but not mine.

It looks like Google does not index the whole page. If I look on "site:www.whisky-distilleries.info", I see all my 400 pages are indexed. As all my pages are build with same kind of templates, the first lines are the same for nearly all the pages. Indexing seems to begin with the DHTML code contained in my navigation bars, and then, nothing else....
It really looks like Google stops after reading this buttons....
There must be something in my navigation bars which helds Google from indexing further...
My navigation bars are generated by Fireworks MX2004, and are put on the pages as Server Side Includes.
As Fireworks generates a complete html page, I have to suppress the <html>, <head>, </head>, tags. However, I left the <body ..> tag as this tag is also used for the onLoad instruction for the gif images.

Does anybody hav an idea on what is happening?
I'm searching the bug since days now, and just cannot find it...

Thanks a lot

redcircle · #2 (**permalink**) 08-14-2004, 08:49 AM

IMO KISS

Is the dhtml necessary. Use normal text links. Using so much dhtml makes for a lower content/code ratio which hurts ranking. You have partial CSS on your site but you are still using the font tag. You can use classes to replace ALL the font tags. This will not only greatly reduce the size of you page but will increase the content/code ratio. If you want rollovers check this non-javascript tutorial http://www.alistapart.com/articles/rollovers/

header tags. You don't have any header tags. You are using CSS classes to change emphisize a menu header. Use header tags. h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6. Using these will also help to better your rank. <h1> pulling most importance should be use for the title of your site. <h2>title of the current page. etc down the line of importace.

PS: You have great content! Very informative!

slainthe · #3 (**permalink**) 08-14-2004, 09:11 AM

Thank you very much redcircle for having examinated my site.

In fact, my problem is not so much ranking within Google. This was my problem some weeks ago, but my site is found very well on Google, and the periodicity of the Google bots visits is very high. My index page is visited each two days, and a complete scan is done weekly. SO I'm happy with this.
I perfectly realise that my navigation bars are heavy, but I could not find an easier way to produce nice looking (or at least not to ugly looking) navigation bars, than producing them with Fireworks. I did not decide to produce dhtml, Fireworks did it for me....
I'm surprised you tell me there are no ALT informations on the buttons, as I really added them. And I can see them in the browser...
About the font tags, I just added them a few weeks ago, as I was told this can help Google to find some important keywords. On the other hand, I just removed the heading tags, as the visual effect of this feature is very bad in Firefox, which is my favorite browser.

My problem is to understand why Google does not index my body text... It looks like it finds a tag somewhere telling him he has to stop and leave the page. For instance, I have several instances of <body> tags, and my question is if Google stops after the firs instance?
This could explain why I can search on the alt text of my buttons, but not on my plain text...

Anyway, thank you very much for your valuable input.

redcircle · #4 (**permalink**) 08-14-2004, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slainthe

I'm surprised you tell me there are no ALT informations on the buttons, as I really added them. And I can see them in the browser...

I noticed that. I was looking at spacer images that were right below it and edited my post. I guess you read it before I edited it. Sorry.

slainthe · #5 (**permalink**) 08-15-2004, 01:39 PM

I guess I have found the problem. I'll be sure of it when Google will update the indexes. They do this very regularly on my site.
What I found is:

I am using Dreamweaver templates to generate my site. When I began making my site, I made some templates, but they are rather complicated, and there are some inconsistencies in it. Especially when tables are contained in other tables. There is some table end tag on the wrong place.
I was debugging my site, and could determine to which place in the pages Google had indexed the page.
Looking to my pages in Dreamweaver, I noticed that when I was going down with my cursor on the html, I could follow exactly to the place Google had indexed the page. And from this place, the cursor jumped to the end of the table (which is on the end of the page)...

I'm not really sure that is the real reason (I hope so), but the similarity of behaviour between my cursor on the html and Google is surprising...

I changed my templates (most of them). They are cleaner now, and my cursor goes through them without problem. I hope Google will also.

If thie was the problem, I guess it is interesting for more webmasters, who ar may be not aware of the fact Google dit not index the pages completely...

... to be followed ....

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