Too soon?

Is it pretty common to take a couple months for a site to start getting indexed by google? My site has been live since 4/28, and vBSEO was installed on 5/19. Since then I've been applying alot of the wonderful ideas here:

• SEO version of the welcome headers.
• Relevent replacements for the forumdisplay and showthread.
• Requested 2.45 and installed the sitemap generator, submitted them to google.

I'm running vBadvanced and the forum both in root, url rewrites use the default settings (CRU's aren't the same as here though), I did change file not found redirects to home, setup custom rewrites for the vba index, and ecdownloads.

Code:

'^showgroups\.php$' => 'forumleaders.html'
'^index\.php\?page=(\w+)$' => 'index-$1.html'
'^downloads\.php$'=> 'files.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=cat&id=(\d+)'=>'cat$1.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=file&id=(\d+)'=>'file$1.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=stats'=>'filestats.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=my'=>'myfiles.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=manfiles'=>'managefiles.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=search'=>'filesearch.html'
'^downloads\.php\?do=add&cat='=>'addfilecat.html'
'^forums\.php' => 'forums.html'
'^online\.php' => 'online.html'

I grabbed a robots.txt from here to use:

Code:

# All robots will spider the domain

# Disallow directory
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admincp/
Disallow: /ajax.php
Disallow: /articlebot/
Disallow: /attachment.php
Disallow: /attachments/ 
Disallow: /clientscript/
Disallow: /cpstyles/
Disallow: /customavatars/
Disallow: /customprofilepics/
Disallow: /calendar.php
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /editpost.php
Disallow: /external.php
Disallow: /favicon.ico
Disallow: /images/ 
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /inlinemod.php 
Disallow: /install/
Disallow: /joinrequests.php
Disallow: /login.php 
Disallow: /member.php? 
Disallow: /memberlist.php
Disallow: /misc.php
Disallow: /modcp/
Disallow: /moderator.php
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /newattachment.php
Disallow: /newreply.php 
Disallow: /newthread.php
Disallow: /online.php
Disallow: /payment_gateway.php
Disallow: /payments.php
Disallow: /poll.php
Disallow: /postings.php 
Disallow: /private.php 
Disallow: /profile.php 
Disallow: /register.php
Disallow: /report.php
Disallow: /reputation.php
Disallow: /search.php
Disallow: /sendmessage.php
Disallow: /showgroups.php
Disallow: /subscription.php
Disallow: /usercp.php
Disallow: /threadrate.php
Disallow: /usercp.php
Disallow: /usernote.php

The reason I'm a little concerned is because google still doesn't have any of my site indexed. Whenever I notice a googlebot on my site (they are on alot now), it's always sitting on the index while the other bots are viewing threads. I figured it would be best to ask rather than wait to find out I'd done something wrong that was stopping the googlebots from indexing.

My site: getpwnd.com

Originally Posted by coldblooded

My site: getpwnd.com

Do this:

if you don't use firefox, get it.
then, get the web developer toolbar: Web Developer Extension

Restart firefox.

open up your site.
on the CSS tab, disable styles-> all styles

This is what google sees, and remember, it can't read text on pictures.

As you can see, it can't read just about any of it. the majority of your problems come from the skin you chose. Sure, it looks good.... but its anti-seo.

Search under my name in here, and you will see a bunch of tips i've given to people having similar problems.

Thanks for the heads up Brian. I can fix the navigation issue with the css method I found searching your posts. Is that the main culprit, or do you think dumping the style for another is my best bet?

The problem is that 99.99999% of all styles that are out there do the exact same thing.

I suggest you hang on and wait for the vbseo template.... which i will be starting once vB 3.6 is finalized. It will be full CSS/XHTML driven, SEO friendly, removing all the useless markup, js, and such, and will be a great asset to vBSEO customers.

This template, paired with the vBSEO package and sitemap generator will be HARD to beat by others with out it.

Wanted to thank Brian again for his help. That plugin really showed some of the issues with that style. Using image replacement, as well as moving more things to the css helped alot. One of many great members here, thanks!

Glad to help

Originally Posted by briansol

The problem is that 99.99999% of all styles that are out there do the exact same thing.

I suggest you hang on and wait for the vbseo template.... which i will be starting once vBulletin 3.6 is finalized. It will be full CSS/XHTML driven, SEO friendly, removing all the useless markup, js, and such, and will be a great asset to vBSEO customers.

This template, paired with the vBSEO package and sitemap generator will be HARD to beat by others with out it.

I cant wait for this template release. Sounds fantastic.

i think it does too. Once vb3.6 is final, i'm going to start cracking at it.