Does anyone have tips or suggestions on how to get my shop noticed by search engines? With all the "SEO" fields throughout Shopping Cart Creator Pro you would think the search engines would pick up on something! I have had my site up for over a week, have all the SEO fields completed on every page and item and searched for some specific text I have entered in some of these fields and didn't see my site in the results anywhere (at least the first ten pages).

Is anyone sharing this problem? Am I misunderstanding the purpose of the SEO tabs? Please help!

A week isn't long enough for the bots to read your descriptions and or keywords yet.

I've had my site up for months, and did the SEO fields weeks & weeks ago, and my google entries still have the old description. They are slowly starting to be replaced with my descriptions, but it does take a lot longer than a week.

If your URL is new, google will always favor old URLs too, so take that into account.

The bots might visit your site (as seen in your stats), but it doesn't mean they read everything you've got on your site.

Give it another few weeks and then see how it's going.

Thanks for the info, Bren I'm new to all this. Speaking of stats.. how do you tell the difference between a bot hitting it and a real person or can you?

No problems Tim.

Depends on how your hosting provider gives you stats, but they should have a read out on which search engines spidered your site, and the date. Mine lists them all separately, and the dates they visited. And even though Yahoo visits regularly, they are yet to include more than my Home Page.... It is the luck of the draw.

Try to look for your sites stats, visits, and see if you can drill into where they tell you browsers, countries and that type of information.

A lot of us are new QUESTION is how new

Have you added a sitemap to your website

Have you opened an account with Google to upload site map to

Have you submitted your site to yahoo, and entered all your pages as feeds

I had a website for three years with almost no results until doing the above,

Viv

I did create a sitemap with CC sitemapper but I'm not sure if I have it configured correctly since from what I can gather on their tutorials, I think I should be able to view the sitemap as a part of my site after I configure and upload it (maybe not??) I'm just taking that from what it said about people being able to use the sitemap as a way to navigate around the site and I can't see the sitemap when I go to my site so I'm not sure if I did that correctly. I did submit that sitemap to Google but again if I didn't configure it correctly, I'm guessing it wouldn't do much good to submit it. I know these questions should be in the sitemapper forum but any help you may be able to provide would be appreciated.

Tim

I did check out the site stats on my host provider (very interesting!) and it does list the type of browser used and the OS they are running. I didn't see anything that specified when a search engine spidered my site. Maybe it is there and I just didn't noticed it? I'm using Go Daddy as a host and their free web statistics. Are there other tools with better functionality available for this?

Tim

theoretically your sitemap should appear at something like

yourwebsiteurl.co.uk/sitemap.xml or yourwebsiteurl.co.uk/sitemap folder name/sitemap.xml

if you registered it with Google or Yahoo within your own account after about an hour it should appear as accepted or rejected (found or not found)

I found using CC sitemap built in ftp for me did not work (confusing) but by uploading it with free ftp or direct ftp you have better visibility of what you are doing and where it is located

as a guide :: dont expect too much from search results in less than about 8 weeks initially

with practice, and careful key wording i have managed to get a website found in two weeks, but it was a very specific search

Ie my site in signature, I specialise in:: name pendants, and:: handmade 9ct earrings site made live about a week after SCC pro became available

Viv

I just went and looked at your profile I love this line "The staff and forums are very helpful. I'm determined to finish her site tonight.. wish me luck!"

Which night was that ?

Go Daddy should include the information. I can't imagine a big company like that not including it. I wasn't sure if you hosted through a small reseller, and something they don't have good stats.

Keep trying around your visits area. I've never used Go Daddy so I don't know their stat layout, but it should be there. It may be included with all the visits, where it should list them by IP, and look for anything like google, or bots.

You can try Google Analytics, but personally I don't bother as I get enough info from my provider.

I think I posted that Wednesday night and I uploaded her site Thursday.