Google Search Results or Lack Thereof

rashbrook

I feel like I'm going in circles.

I would like the kind of result that you get when you go to google, and type in "moonriver photography" or "photoscape design". I would REALLY like the result that appears when you go to google and type "kevin winzeler" (with links to pages within Kevin's site structured underneath the initial result)

My site: www.ashbrook-photography.com

I've entered metadata, and keywords. all of my photos are keyworded and captioned. sometimes when I search for ashbrook photography, on about page 5 of the results, I get a strange link to a "timeline" page within my site. but not always. other times, I find a link to my homepage on about page 10 of the google results, but again, not always.

I thought that since smugmug was automatically submitting a sitemap to google, I would end up with a listing like Kevin Winzeler's, or at the least, a link to the homepage somewhere within the first couple pages of results at least, preferably like moonriver or photoscape - in the first one or three results.

So i went and signed up for google webmaster tools. my sitemaps say that 9 url's have been submitted, but there are 0 url's in the web index?? under sitemap below that it just says "/sitemap-index.xml". It has a green checkmark - but thats all there is. Nothing below that, no other entries, just one entry.I clicked the button that says "re-submit" but, same thing. On the dashboard page, Query, Links, Keywords - all say "no data available". I don't get it.

I dont know. This is all new to me. I'd like to just get this working so I can get out and take some pictures again, (site in the top results, preferably with internal links below) and have security that smugmug is indexing my site with google so that can happen.

Am I just supposed to wait longer? Do I really need to submit sitemaps manually, etc, or does this all happen naturally if i leave it alone, and promote my site? (e.g., the more people who search for and click on my site, the higher it goes, etc.)

Thanks for advice and assistance ;-)

-Robert

Andy

Hi Robert, you're off to a good start, but remember to do ALL of the things we list here http://smugmug.com/help/search-engines - getting high results takes some work and time, but the payoff will be there!

rashbrook

Hi Andy, and thanks again for your reply.

Is that to say, that (since the page you reference doesnt really say anything directly about manually updating sitemaps) that even though the sitemaps seem not to be populated on google webmaster tools, that they will, without any intervention from me?

When I follow the help in google webmaster tools and do a search for "ashbrook-photography.com", I get a result, but instead of pages underneath, there are just links to keywords. Something seems not right about that. If there are sitemaps being updated automatically, shouldnt my pages and keywords bs showing up there, and shouldnt the sitemaps be populated in webmaster tools?

Andy

rashbrook wrote: »

Hi Andy, and thanks again for your reply.

Is that to say, that (since the page you reference doesnt really say anything directly about manually updating sitemaps) that even though the sitemaps seem not to be populated on google webmaster tools, that they will, without any intervention from me?

Yes.