While we're on the subject.... Fixing a BIG BOO-BOO --

and sharing it just in case anyone else did, or has thought about doing, something this dumb.

I didn't want to make AmericaZoo appear commercial. It was a "free educational site," and dammit, it was gonna stay that way!!

So I set up AmericaZooSHOPS.com and decided all my product sales would be there.

And I set up AmericaZooTravelGuide.com for later, so my Zoo Directory and travel stuff could go there (God forbid it should be on my "free educational site"!).

I had two others in mind for later.

BAD BAD IDEA!!

I mentioned this before in terms of "cross linking," but I'm mentioning it again because I've learned a lot from the experience (maybe "the light finally came on" is a better way to describe it).

SHOPS is going nowhere fast.

It has NO Google presence that I can see. It's competing with 80 bzillion other sites that sell the same kind of stuff. And I can't prove it, but I think my efforts to promote SHOPS have actually *hurt* ZOO just a tiny bit.

My push to get SHOPS ranked was not that I do so great with affiliate sales, but because my Google click-through rate is through the roof among the few people who actually find the site. I was putting condensed versions of all the animal pages on the SHOPS site... ohhhhhhh, you name it, I was pouring time into it.

Suddenly... A BLINDING LIGHT! (or was it a blinding headache?)

The problem is (I believe) that I link to SHOPS at least twice on EVERY PAGE of ZOO, and I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of pages. It's relevant, it's legitimate, but it looks like link spamming.

The other (obvious) problem is that it's a brand new site struggling to find its place in the world. Nobody (least of all Google) gives a rat's a** that it's an extension (in my mind) of an established, decently-ranked site.

Not only that, but I divided my own efforts. WHAT A DODOBIRD!!

Here I am, struggling to get SHOPS indexed -- a brand new site -- when I've already got a site that was on the net for at least two years before its sudden demise followed by three months of downtime during which it disappeared from the search engines.

When I bought it and got it up and running again, some of my critters were back near the top of Google within DAYS!

How dumb can one person be?

I can't even get the darn thing spidered as far as I know -- but my main site is spidered REGULARLY just like every other site on Google, so Google WOULD AUTOMATICALLY HAVE INDEXED SHOPS if I'd put it in a folder.

I was so obsessed with not making my "free educational site" look commercial that it didn't occur to me that the highest-ranking sites have stuff for sale all over the place!!

GEEEEEZZZZZ!!

Lucky for me, it's an easy fix and probably no more than 50 hours wasted (very little in the great scheme of life).

Well, I'm off to move some stuff, delete some stuff, redirect the site, and smack myself upside the head.

Hope this is useful to somebody.

Luv,