New site not getting indexed on any engines

[Tackle_Berry]

Hi,

Hoping someone can help, I have made a ecommerce site that has been live for around 3 weeks now, it was built with wordpress and woocommerce.

I have submitted it to all the main search engines, as well as made linkedin, twitter, facebook accounts for the site with links. Also heard that making a google adword campaign can help even when you don't proceed past the payments.

I'm not expecting the site to rank high straight away or anything but even typing the url in google search doesn't bring it up.

Also just thought it's worth mentioning, when making the site I was using a different company name and url, once the site was complete I decided on changing the name and url (TSO host switched the URL for me), the original name was indexed before finishing the build.

Any ideas would be really appriciated.

 

[GravyMonster]

Also just thought it's worth mentioning, when making the site I was using a different company name and url, once the site was complete I decided on changing the name and url (TSO host switched the URL for me), the original name was indexed before finishing the build.

That's what's probably screwed you. Google could have penalised for duplicate content (same content on multiple domains). It may take some time for the spiders to realise that the old URL is definitely down and the new one is the primary.

For the future always make sure to place a development site in a nofollow zone with a robots.txt file that's as tight as a ducks arse.

 

[Th3M8dH8tt3r]

Give it time. Always set wordpress to not allowing indexing when developing. Even better, develop locally.

 

[Redrum]

Are you able to set 301 redirects up from the original domain that has been indexed? That might help to get you indexed and will also tell any engines that indexed the old domain that you haven't ripped off its content. But you'd need to do it quickly before they drop the old domain and stop trying to index it.

There is also a change of web address tool in Webmaster Tools you could use, but I'm guessing you don't have a Webmaster Tools account for the old domain.

I think though that you should bear in mind that search engine rankings are becoming less and less relevant in e-commerce these days as Google rams more and more paid listings down people's throats whilst pretending that they are natural. Even the product feed is entirely PPC now. I think eventually the entire first page will be paid listings. So if you want to get traffic and hopefully orders, you might want to consider setting up a PPC campaign because you will probably ultimately need to anyway.

 

[Tackle_Berry]

Thanks for the help.

I figured that it was probably the change of domain that messed it up. When doing the site I was just using a plug-in that put it in maintenance mode so people couldn't view the site but I didn't change the robots file to block indexing.

There is also a change of web address tool in Webmaster Tools you could use, but I'm guessing you don't have a Webmaster Tools account for the old domain.

Unfortunately I made the account but never got round to verifying the site.

Are you able to set 301 redirects up from the original domain that has been indexed?

No idea, what would I need to do to find out?

As for PPC, the plan is to do that very soon anyway so will that automatically sort the issue?

 

[Redrum]

No idea, what would I need to do to find out?

It needs to be set up with wherever the domain is hosted. Your hosting company probably has some kind of control panel for setting up redirects, or if it's pointing to some hosting on an Apache server, you might be able to do it by putting .htaccess files in, or your domain registrar might even offer that service.

As for PPC, the plan is to do that very soon anyway so will that automatically sort the issue?

Well if Google have decided you have duplicate content, it's not going to resolve that, but it would get you some traffic. I didn't really bring it up as a solution to the problem of not being indexed (although I have heard people claim PPC can affect natural rankings). I mentioned it because you said you've started an e-commerce site and I didn't know if you realised how much PPC dominates e-commerce these days.

 

[dan958]

When you changed the name, did you do 404 redirects in the .htaccess (linking the links google has indexed to your new pages)