By FYItag on
I can't seem to find a definitive answer... I have pages on my site www.fyitag.com that can only be reached though search. I mean there are no links on the website to these pages and example would be http://www.fyitag.com/thewinestewardnh or http://www.fyitag.com/jamesrowe will these pages ever get indexed? I have xml sitemap submitting urls to the search engins, and that file includes these, but all that seems to be indexed are pages you can find from travsing the links from my homepage.
Part of my difficulty is that i dont know of a way to check this other than waiting a month or so to see if google indexes these pages by itself....
Comments
I don't know, but I would
I don't know, but I would definitely link to them the traditional way. Why? 1) Those pages will rank better (more links to them), and 2) They will link back to your homepage and other pages (the benefit for those pages is marginal, but why not have it anyway?). My 2 cents.
re:I don't know, but I would
The goal it to have a self managed directory, so categorizing and managing a page of links to the profiles would be a lot of work. ...and that is what we have trying to avoid. Right now a user sets up their profile (Feel free to try it out) and we create their custom url as www.fyitag.com/username they can link to that profile from their site, and everything works fine. They show up in sitemap as well, but i am trying to figure out the best way to make this elegantly self perpetuating
re:I don't know, but I would
In signup screen, question marks by the business/personal user selection don't work (I'm on Mac using Chrome). After that's in Level 1 billing, fix "wher"! Then in settings edit page, error says "Please insert alphabet for business btype"; alphabet, btype? lol... happens. Oh no, it even cut off my postal code down to 5 characters without telling me. Anyway, I'm there now. The biggest problem so far, is that I have no clue where to go from here.
Back to the original question... XML sitemaps are there for that purpose. But I would still have a full listing, and I don't know what's hard about it. You can even just dump a paginated alphabetical listing. I would also have a few random businesses show up on different pages (and the homepage) -- but not in an aggressive way. In other words, if you're helping businesses promote themselves online, I'd go one small step further and increate their pageranks just a notch. Trust me, to many startups that would be a good enough reason to sign up.
re:I don't know, but I would
Thanks for the feedback. The "wher" was easy i fixed that one along with the help icons. They should open up some video help. The other is evidently what my developer thought was plain english. I like the ideas you have to improve pageranks and the listings, i'll look into that and fixing the postal code thing.
This link is a video to help you through filling out the profile http://fyitag.com/content/fill-out-your-profile-quicktip we are working to flesh out the video help to cover everything we can think of.
thanks for the help!
David
re:I don't know, but I would
Not a fan of tutorials :) Don't worry, I'm not interested in the service anyway. Test the website with people who are.
Good luck with the project, David. Glad to see that you choose Drupal!