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Please Help!
mamtrader
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24 Apr 11 10:35 am

Please Help!

Guys, please help.

This is driving me insane - My sitemap (php) is still appearing in the search results instead of my main keywords. This has been going on for over a year now...

I've tried everything (301 redirects, setting a preferred domain etc). I'm thinking of getting rid of my sitemap completely. Does anyone know why this is happening and how to fix it? I'd be more than happy to pay someone.

Thank you for any help - Mike
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Last edited by mamtrader on 24 Apr 11 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
mamtrader
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24 Apr 11 11:05 am

 Oops, nearly forgot: My url is: http://www.clickfitpro.com

Just a side note: should my sitemap be an html file? Both my webpage sitemap versions (http://www.clickfitpro.com/sitemap-alphabetical.php and http://www.clickfitpro.com/sitemap-page-order.php) are php files. Could this cause any problems?

Thanks in advance for any help - Mike
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cecille.l
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24 Apr 11 10:48 pm

 Hi Mike,

Your sitemap can be in either html and php. That shouldn't cause any problems.

Looking at your site, it seems to be missing H1 tags. This could very well be the culprit. Try using Traffic Travis and make sure the target keywords on your articles are in your H1 tags.
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Cecille

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wollowra
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25 Apr 11 2:12 am

 Hi Mike,
Yes, check all your h1 tags etc.
However, I don't think there is anything wrong..it is just that your pages are not coming up prominently in google search.
I just typed in "how to build muscle for skinny guys" and you have alot of competition there for that keyword.

Then I typed in "clickfitpro how to build muscle for skinny guys" and it was on the first page so it has been indexed.

Also, Your sitemap can show if you do not have enough backlinks to your other pages.
Remember, Google ranks pages not sites.
Because your sitemap has 10 or so internal pages linking to it, Google sees this and ranks that sitemap page accordingly...because it thinks it is important because you have links going back to it.
Try linking some of your anchor text on certain pages to other related pages on your site.. interlinking.

I just typed in clickfitpro into google and you were on the first page, and it was your home index page.
If your other pages are not showing then you really need to look at your keywords and pages you are targeting and get some more backlinks to those pages. Also, any anchor text that you are using to link back to your site from other sites needs to be highly relevant and targeted.

Also, I noticed when I click on the banners it opens in the same window.
I always open my ads in a separate window so that my main site is always open behind.
Not sure if this helps or not.

P.S by the way, I am very impressed with your site that was built with xsitepro. Well done on the layout and design.


Regards
Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
mamtrader
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25 Apr 11 7:08 am

 Troy & Cecile - thank you for your replies.

My thoughts: While I can understand that Google did not determine my keywords as the most relevant, it doesn't explain why google would see my sitemap as more relevant than my actual page which is fully optimised for each keyword (all A's in traffic travis) and has backlinks coming to it.

More to the point - an addon domain I have which only has 1-2 backlinks and has only been online for 2-3 months has none of these probelms; it ranks steadily in Google for its targeted keyword (about position 30 at the moment) which is miles better than where my sitemap ranks for the keywords on my root domain (clickfitpro.com)

Another aside: I just did a google search for "how to get abs fast" which is one of my keywords and it brings up "how to lose a beer belly" - it's like you said, the page relevance is completely off.

This is really starting to get me down. Is there anything else you can suggest to fix this? I have done all SEO work myself and can look back at my records and see that there is nothing wrong with the links; they all point to the right place etc...

If there's anything else you can suggest I would be extremely grateful - Mike.
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wollowra
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25 Apr 11 7:55 am

 Sorry Mike,
The only thing I can think of is to increase your internal linking to other pages.
The sitemap is linked to from every page on your site so it actually has 10+ links going to it.
So pick your top 3 pages and drive links to those pages from your other pages on the site.
Also, make sure your robots.txt file is ok.. in other words you may have it set to dissallow or no index... not sure.
Hope you sort it out... I hope some other guys here can chip in too.
Regards
Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
chettvq24
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25 Apr 11 5:32 pm

 I tried looking for some of your keywords and I only found relevant pages from your site not the sitemap page. Of course I don't know your main keyword to can not look at that to see if the sitemap is showing.

I may be a million miles off, but are you certain it is not just google showing you your sitemap higher because you have clicked on it a lot when you are looking at the google results, i.e personalized results.
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wollowra
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26 Apr 11 1:37 am

 Yes I got the same thing Chett, I got every page except the site map.

Troy
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize
they were the big things.

-- Robert Brault
 
mamtrader
Posts: 46
Joined: 16 Aug 09
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26 Apr 11 4:39 am

 Thanks for the responses guys - really appreciate it.

Troy's reasoning that my sitemap acquiring 10+ links (thus relevancy) makes sense and could explain why it's being picked up by Google. I think the best way to move forward is to simply keep adding backlinks and hope that over time the results sort themselves out.

I don't think there's anything else I can do from my end. Thanks again for your help Troy, Cecile and Chett. Any other advice you have (sitemap related or not) would be more than welcome.

Cheers, Mike.
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fastnobull
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26 Apr 11 5:40 am

 I had a similar problem before, but I never got around to solving it. I did keep on adding backlinks but I wasn't satisfied after a month. You have any updates on your effort today?
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