Web Page disappeared from Google

[dbryson]

Hi,

I want to thank you in advance for responding to this, I truly appreciate it. I just want to mention that I am not a professional programmer and I designed this web page in Dreamweaver. If you do respond please do so in the simplest terms possible. My wife is an artist and we designed a web site, Connie Bryson on which to display her art. We published it to the web in May or June of 2006. By April or May of 2007 if you typed in "Connie Bryson" on Google her page had risen "organically" or "naturally" to the first page of search results. By September she was #1 on the search results. I typed in "Connie Bryson" about two weeks ago and it was like her page had vanished completely from Google. I searched 27 pages of Goggle results and could not find her site. She was still #1 on Yahoo, but had completely disappeared on Google. Any thoughts on what happenned to her site and how I can re-list her site on Google would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

David

[crankydave]

First of all, the site is still listed in Google...

info:http://conniebrysonstudio.com/ - Google Search

What I'm seeing is a possible canonical problem.

When you follow the link above, notice that your URL for the home page does not have the www. Also, you're using the /index.html link on the site for the "home" link. You'll want to change that link to Connie Bryson. Also make sure you are consistant throughout the site by using the www. on all of your internal links if you are not.

I'd also check with your hosting company about adding a 301 redirect from the URL without the www. to the one with the www.

Eventually, Google sorts this out assigning value to one or the other, but it's a good idea to check on the 301.

If you're not able to get a 301 put in place, you can specify to Google in their webmaster control panel which URL you prefer. This will help take care of the problem with them.

Dave

[dbryson]

Dave,

I truly appreciate the quick response. I will take care of the www

I do have a question about the index.html and this is where I get confused. When I'm in the Dreamweaver program it tells me that the name of the homepage needs to have the index in it. How do I change that to the Connie Bryson?

Thank you again,

Sincerely,

David

[incrediblehelp]

I dont think you should expect a web page to rank for a keyword when you have little or no content on it. Also do you have backlinks with anchor text containing the keyword "Connie Bryson"? if not you need some. Here are some helpful links:

Search Engine Marketing For Newbies - Jaan’s Search Marketing and SEO Blog from Cincinnati, Ohio

[crankydave]

You may have to go into the html view itself to change the individual links. You could also create your own home link instead of using the one in the template. I'm not familiar enough with Dreamweaver to know exactly how.

Dave

[marci11]

FYI, I just found the keywords Connie Bryson at #846 of Google by using this helpful tool online: Google Rank checker Rank Finder Position checker Google Position Checker

Plus, sometimes things just fluctuate a ton with Google. That's what I've noticed anyway.

[mvandemar]

Just so you know, this actually appears to be a recurring glitch with Google. If you ranked before, and disappeared today then I would be much more inclined to attribute it to that glitch than to anything you did (or could fix).

You can read some discussion about it over here at SEORefugee:

To wait or to do something (lost rankings) - Search Engine Optimization Forum - SEO Refugee

It's an issue I noticed 2 years ago that comes and goes with certain sites with no discernible pattern. Sometimes searching with the &filter=0 parameter will show you back at #1 again (although with this go around that does not seem to be the case). I mentioned it to Matt Cutts last summer, when that time the glitch affected his blog, but only when using Google Blog Search:

http://sphinn.com/story/3921

They fixed that one instance, but ignored the rest of the times the glitch happens.

-Michael

[BigOakSEO]

I agree this probably has nothing to do with anything you have done or not done. The competition for your name has to be very low and the fact you have a website with your name as the domain name should be showing you at the top of Google. Give it some time and you'll be fine.

As for the dreamweaver issue...if you put a "/" without the quotes that will always direct you to the root of the web, which means your domain name without the index.html. So in the link box simple put the / in the box for any links pointing to the home page. Alternatively you can put the full url: http://www.conniebrysonstudio.com in place of the index.html and that will work too.

That will take care of your internal links pointing to more than one place.

[Big Juice]

I can't imagine that the second set of meta tags is helping you at all.

For the www. issue, it is easier to go to google and set upi your webmaster account and use their system for dealing with the canonical issue.

Set up the xml site map and add some content to the pages. The art work is fine but you need to add some text as well.

Spend some time by doing some free HTML tutorials like the kind you can find at webmonkey.com and then redesign the site. When adding text to your site it is important to remember that readers do not suufer eye strain as much when it is black text on a white background. Any color text on a black background could cause your readers/viewers to leave the site.

Add some ALT tags to your images and don't stuff them with keywords. If you don't know how to do those here is a sample of your code that has been edited to include the ALT tag.

Original
<img src="Topanga Canyon 36x48 1.jpg" alt="TC8" width="450" height="337" />

Edited
<img src="Topanga Canyon 36x48 1.jpg" alt="Topanga Canyon - Valley View" width="450" height="337" />

Once you have set up your Google webmaster account make sure that you opt in to the enhanced image search option. Your wife is in the business of displaying her images so it makes sense that you get traffic from image searches.

To get links for your site you might want to consider adding a section to your site where you offer some free advice on painting. If you give some free advice away others may link to your site which is always helpful in terms of search engine ranking.

To monitize the site you may want to consider adding some affiliate accounts for art supplies.

Above all else just keep in mind that if you take care of your site in terms of pleasing humans search engines will eventually show you some love.

God luck and have fun learning about the inner workings of the Internet.

[redspace]

Check your html code. I believe you've got it wrong. I suppose you are doing something wrong while cut and paste. Take out the meta verify tag once you have done verifying.