Did you notice the upgrade?

Our website received an upgrade last week. Has anyone noticed? Actually, I hope no-one has and the reason is that if we have done our job correctly then the upgraded website should look like the old one.

So why did we do it?
We upgraded the site in preparation for whats to come, a visual upgrade later in 2007 and we wanted to take avantage of the smarter technology on our new server.

3 day listing

3 days after submitting the XML siteMap the site of this story is listed. The site was cached at midnight the evening after we sumitted the sitemap. Nothing showed up on the organic search results over the next two days - very early Friday morning and the site is listed at the top of the search results.

Yesterday was one of those days where your list just gets longer as the day! Then last night I collapsed into bed exhaused and didn't do any of my usual catch-ups. Question is - when did the site actually list? - I checked at 4:30pm and it hadn't listed - Michelle checked at 8:25 and YES! it was there. Howzat!

Page Listed but not site

36 hours on and we find that "the" site is still not indexed by Google.

Of some consolation to us is our client page is listed when we type the name of the product - wondercap - into Google. Interestingly enough the cached version of the page from last week does not show the new updates. Still not good enough for our client. We continue to monitor and do what we can.

24 hours on

No progress 24 hours after submitting the sitemap to Google. Unfortunately an old page from Trade Me in April, with an out of date price, continues to show on Google when searching for wondercap.
Of course the site we are looking to list is wondercap.co.nz
I have one more trick up my sleeve to try tomorrow.

Search Engine Sprint

"Help" says the client, "my website is not listed on Google, I'm going to be on television in 3 days time - is there some way I can get listed so I can catch all those people who will be looking for my product after the show?"

So much for planning! I know it's common for Google to take 3 weeks to 3 months (or more) to list a website. We can usually get them listed within three weeks just by adding a link on our website. Of course adding links to our website has the potential to lower our ranking so I need to be a bit careful with this.

We love a challenge so we have jumped right in - if we get the site listed within 3 days then our client will pay our SEO bill - otherwise theres no charge.

Over the next few days I'll report on whats happening and what we are doing.

How to grow your business web site

Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.

Read more on this in Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox