Better relevancy for a main index

WorkAolic

Last year I created a website for this company, one of my main goals was to give them a good presence with search engines, the old website design I replaced was very bad, not even meta tags was present, and they never got indexed, and was never found on search engines in any way possible...

Anyway, a year later since I made the new site, they are very pleased to see that the new website shows up on search engines when you type the initials of the company. However, personally, I am not satisfied, so since I am doing phase two, I also want to find a way to make the index show up on search engines. Currently only the inside pages are indexed, but not the main index. I think it's because the main index doesn't have good relevancy, we all know that search engines takes the meta tags and body to create a relevancy percentage. However, since the index has only a few words in the body, search engines drop it.

So is there a way to create a better relevancy for this pretty much blank index, without actually adding noticeable text or images. The company do not want to change it, so I need to find a way to add content on the index, so search engines can create better relevancies and actually index it.

Here is the website in question if you want to see the index page, as I said I can't change anything visually on the index.
http://www.cbina.com/

Any help would be greatly appreciated...Thank you!

vaaaska

WorkAolic wrote:
we all know that search engines takes the meta tags and body to create a relevancy percentage. However, since the index has only a few words in the body, search engines drop it.

We do?

It's called Google™ PageRank™. Meaning, people who have linked to a page...meaning higher search results.

You won't get a high return unless you put content on a page - just another thump against splash pages. You could try to trick it with insivisible text (in an h2 tag) but this could also hurt things as well.

I suggest you check out Googles webmaster tools...learn about 'sitemaps' (which is a new initiative they sort of just got rolling). And perhaps dump the splash page since it's not even serving it's purpose as it is.

Oh yeah, and read up about meta tags...because you are working with Soviet technology on that one.

WorkAolic

vaaaska wrote:
...Meaning, people who have linked to a page...meaning higher search results.

It's not about ranking, but just to find a way to index the main page, (splash page as you call it). All other pages in that website are well indexed, actually every month they go up.

vaaaska wrote:
You could try to trick it with insivisible text (in an h2 tag) but this could also hurt things as well.

Well since that single page doesn't get indexed at all, it won't hurt to try. 🙂

vaaaska wrote:
I suggest you check out Googles webmaster tools...learn about 'sitemaps'

As I said the regular pages are well indexed and doing fine. The problem is only the main index, it won't be indexed fault of substance, and it's for that I am searching a solution.

vaaaska wrote:
And perhaps dump the splash page since it's not even serving it's purpose as it is.

I know it's not that great, I would like to dump it, but the client won't let me convince him, the main index page must stay and untouched visually.

vaaaska wrote:
Oh yeah, and read up about meta tags...because you are working with Soviet technology on that one.

Last time I read about meta's, there was nothing new, or is there. I compare myself with any other website and they are comparable, what's wrong with the meta tags, a little hint on what I am doing wrong would be good.

vaaaska

Meta tags are basically irrelevant. Page content and links are what matter.

Weedpacket

If there's nothing on that page why index it? Search engines operate on the principle that when people want to find a page they want to find a page with the information that they're searching for.
(I mean, if it doesn't even have a site index then it's not much of an index page....)

The index pages you'd want indexed are the two (French and English) that you have leading off that. People who search in French would be pointed to the French version of the page, people who search in English would get the English version.

As vaaaska has pointed out, links to a page make it more likely to be referenced; how many links to the front page does this site have?

vaaaska

Weedpacket wrote:
As vaaaska has pointed out, links to a page make it more likely to be referenced; how many links to the front page does this site have?

Google can also help you figure out this information.

😉

WorkAolic

Weedpacket wrote:
...how many links to the front page does this site have?

Only one, the link I have provided on my first post. :queasy:

So until now, if I gathered correctly all the information you guys have provided, I come to the conclusion that I need to link as many time as possible to the main page.

That means spamming or something of the sort, oh well, since the client is already happy, and I was just trying to improve things of my own free will, I will leave things as is. I never spammed, and won't start today either. I will try that invisible text for a while, that's all.

Thanks for the input guys, appreciated!

Weedpacket

WorkAolic wrote:
I will try that invisible text for a while, that's all.

Then don't be surprised if Google blacklists your site.

Face it; the only way you're going to improve the relevancy of that first page is to make it relevant. Right now it's completely content-free. (Indeed: why bother asking visitors what language they want when the browser has already said what language they prefer? Request headers don't just include "Accept-Language: en-nz,en-gb;q=0.7,en;q=0.3" for decoration, you know.)

WorkAolic

Weedpacket wrote:
Then don't be surprised if Google blacklists your site.

It will blacklist the entire site or just the faulty page? I can't read up an answer, because if it is going to blacklist the entire site, I won't try the invisible text at all.

Weedpacket wrote:
Face it; the only way you're going to improve the relevancy of that first page is to make it relevant. Right now it's completely content-free.

I told the client many time in the passed the main page won't do any good as is, but the client absolutely wanted a main page with only those two links on it. Maybe armed with this thread I can convince them now.

Weedpacket

The word used by Google is "site".

vaaaska

We've said it many times now...if you don't put content that means anything or is actually something that people might want, then forget about trying to get that page indexed. It's really that simple.

Ditch your splash page...