Thread: Did I commit SEO Murder?

Hey all, new to the community & glad to be here.

I just started tinkering around with some template's and did pretty decent on one, launched it and all went well. It's TM Template.

Shortly after launch I noticed that Yahoo! was indexing the site on the 2nd page already for a major keyword that we wanted used on it. I thought great! We're already on the 2nd page and even got a conversion out of it! This is too good to be true! Google had yet to index us anywhere near the top 20 pages for the same keywords.

So after the site get's launched I decided to work on a duplicate mirror image in Spanish. I also went ahead and made 2 more versions one in english and one in spanish but in plain HTML, as the main site has a flash header/menu.

I didn't include a robots.txt with excludes for those directories where the 3 other mirror versions were located.

All of the sudden I'm gone from Yahoo! Even when I search for the company by name. Google has me at the top when I search by company name, but again no where near for the other keywords we wanted. I figure thats all fine and dandy, I have yet to do very much SEO-wise.

I just find it perplexing that Yahoo! could put me on page 2, and all of the sudden now I'm nowhere to be found. It's got me wondering if I committed SEO Murder.

Instead of creating mirror sites, why don't you use Translation Script Support - Net Builders

It's got me wondering if I committed SEO Murder

Well, since what you did is a bit unusual, I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention so that we don't make the same mistake. Phew!

Thanks for sharing man.

Originally Posted by bogart

Instead of creating mirror sites, why don't you use Translation Script Support - Net Builders

After glancing over the script, it appears to utilize Google Translate. I'm pretty sure that script would be unable to translate the flash header which has the menu and a fair bit of info/graphics in it.

I figured now that I had the robots.txt amended to exclude the spanish/html directories, that my rank would climb or come back to normal? But it doesnt seem to be.

I actually ran the site thru woorank.com and learned quite a bit needed to be done SEO Wise.

I just submitted sitemaps to both google and yahoo so lets see how that goes.

Originally Posted by Dangr

After glancing over the script, it appears to utilize Google Translate. I'm pretty sure that script would be unable to translate the flash header which has the menu and a fair bit of info/graphics in it.

If you are using a flash menu, I suggest placing static links to the pages in the column or bottom of the page.

I think once you clean it up your site will return.

Yes, clean it up and wait for Yahoo to crawl again. Hopefully you'll get your rankings back just as nothing has happened.

I think you are really asking if you committed seo "suicide" (ie to yourself) as opposed to seo "murder", which is what you would do to a competitor...
Are you still having this problem, or are you showing up on yahoo again?

Originally Posted by bogart

If you are using a flash menu, I suggest placing static links to the pages in the column or bottom of the page.

/agree

Using FLASH for site navigation is "suicide" (not murder). Your site nav should consist of text links. If you "insist" on using Flash (***sigh***) use it for small components... ads and such... that make up only PART of the page. But never hide your site nav in Flash.

While Google has been indexing Flash for some time now, not all search engines can... and ALL of the content in an SWF file gets indexed under the same URL.

If you can do it in HTML, avoid using Flash.