My PR is 0. Please Help!!

Somehow I just cant figure out how to make those spiders to crawl on my forum.
Here's the URL: http://www.thetalkzone.org
Please tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong.

Thanks :wave:

See Joey's article on SEO for vBulletin elsewhere in this forum.

Your URLs look like this to "Guests":

http://www.thetalkzone.org/modules.php?name=News&file=showarticle&threadid=450
...and remember that spiders are guests. Don't give spiders session IDs and long or complicated URLs like that if you expect them to follow them.

This is the only page currently indexed by Google:

The Talk Zone - Welcome
This is a discussion community where you can talk about anything. Join Today!!
www.thetalkzone.org/ - 90k - Cached - Similar pages
Notice the URL? No session ID.

So how do I disable session ID's?
And arent the spiders supposed to go into the archive??

1. re: how to disable session IDs -- look in the SEO forums here and find Joey's article.

2. re: archives, I just checked and there is a link to your archive page from the main page (which is indexed in Google). Not sure why it isn't finding those links, or even the link to your forum index, which is a well-formed URL.

How long has this forum been going? When did you start it? The one cached page was cached on July 15 and I can't find ANY links in Google for either link:www.thetalkzone.org or link:www.thetalkzone.org/forum/ - my impression is of a new site that has not yet been completely spidered. If that's the case, Google has found your main page -- it will eventually find the rest. But in the meantime, read Joey's SEO article.

I set up the forum in march. but then after the site went down for about 2 months because of my host. So I made up some cash and continued using the forum. The old URL was http://www.thetalkzone.speedking.info . I am still having the same host. Nothing has changed except the URL.

Yeah but the URL change means it's now a new site as far as the SEs are concerned.

You're starting over.

If you still own the previous domain and are on an Apache server, you can use a 301 redirect for the old URL to the new one.

na, the old domain was deleted :(

I don't mean are the files still online.

I mean, do you still own that domain name and is it still an active domain (e.g., parked somewhere perhaps or available to be parked)?

If so, you can redirect requests for the old domain to the new domain.

It wasnt mine. I got it free from my host. But then due to some problems it had to be removed.

Ah. Then there's nothing you can do. You're starting over and you'll have to rebuild PR and search engine ranking.

You should try to track down any links you may have had (in directories or at other sites) pointing to the old URL and ask them to update their links to point to the new URL.

Google is pretty stingy about telling you what backlinks it has for you but you could try the site: query on MSN or use allinurl: and just the URL in quotes on Google. That'll get most of them.

none:'(

No backlinks?

There's your answer then... start getting some. Start by submitting to as many directories as you can...

I've submitted to more than a 100 directories and they accepted me too. But maybe google cant find it.

1. check that you are listed in those directories

2. check that you have direct and live links in those directories -- some use javascript links or redirect links or even "nofollow" links.

so what do i do if there are redirects???

nothing you can do except remove any reciprocal links to the directory and be more careful next time...

ya.

2. re: archives, I just checked and there is a link to your archive page from the main page (which is indexed in Google). Not sure why it isn't finding those links, or even the link to your forum index, which is a well-formed URL.So if i understand correctly, I should make sure that guests see an archive link in my footer or somewhere to help spiders find the archive? I thought that they would crawl it by looking for instructions in the robots.txt file.

The robots.txt file doesn't tell spiders what to index -- it tells them what NOT to index.

Actually, if I search in google for the terms: discussion community "The Talk Zone"
it gives me 44 results. that means i have 44 links to my site on google. But google for some reason doesnt take them as backlinks.

will putting <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> help me in any way?

Actually, if I search in google for the terms: discussion community "The Talk Zone"
it gives me 44 results. that means i have 44 links to my site on google. But google for some reason doesnt take them as backlinks.
On google.com, I get

Results 1 - 10 of about 80 for discussion community "The Talk Zone"
site:www.thetalkzone.org now shows

The Talk Zone - Welcome
This is a discussion community where you can talk about anything. Join Today!!
www.thetalkzone.org/ - 96k - Jul 17, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

www.thetalkzone.org/cgi-bin/forum%22
Similar pages

Why is your forum installed in the cgi-bin directory? That is usually reserved for (a standard directory name for) cgi or Perl scripts and may be part of your problem. I don't think spiders ignore that directory by default but I wonder if Google is assuming there won't be much content there...

will putting <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> help me in any way?
No. All that statement does is direct spiders to do what they do by default. Won't help at all.

My forum isnt installed in the cgi-bin folder.

What is Google finding here then? Was it there before?

site:www.thetalkzone.org now shows

www.thetalkzone.org/cgi-bin/forum%22
Similar pages