Googlebot cannot access your site

[DTOSI]

"At the end of July I received a message in my Google webmaster tools saying "Googlebot can't access your site"

We checked our robots.txt file and removed a line break in it, and then I had Google Fetch the file again. I have not received any more messages since then.

When we created the website I wrote all of the content and optimized each page for about 1 local keyword. A few weeks after I checked my keywords and did have a few on the first page of google. Since then almost all of them have completely disappeared. Because we had not link building effort I would not expect to still be on the first page, but I should definitely be seeing them before the 5th or even 10th page of Google.

The address is http://www.tile-pompanobeach.com

I'm not sure if these horrible results have something to do with the message from Google or something else.

The problem is this client now wants to sign a contract with us for SEO and I really have no Idea what happened and if I will be able to figure it out.

The main keyword for my home page is tile pompano beach

and I aslo was using Pompano Beach Tile store for the About page which was previously on the first page of Google.

Does anyone have some input?

[DTOSI]

Oh and I have been reading a few things on using hyphens in URL's. Before I had read something saying it was good because google reads the keywords separately. But I read that a while ago. Now when I looked into it I am seeing that some people think (and have tested) that using a hyphen in the websites main URL can hurt SEO.

Do you think my domain could be the problem

http://www.tile-pompanobeach.com

[brandonjschwartz]

I don't think the issue is from your domain or the notifications. I received a similar notification but I looked into it and realized my site had gone offline for a little bit of time.

The site looks pretty new. I suspect a lack of links and the fact that Google actually lives in several different data centers (that update their index at different times) is the factor... just my guess though.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Anderson,

Just took a very quick look at your source code and my first reaction would be that there is something "unique" happening with the naming within your site structure

To be more precise ... you have multiple instances like this in the code:

http://www.tile-pompanobeach.com/sites/tile-pompanobeach.com/files/logo.png

since the keyword you are targeting for that page is tile pompano beach, it is not much of a stretch to think perhaps the repetition could be an attempt to manipulate rankings.

Given that you are saying rankings have plummeted to as low as page 10, I would guess that the repetition of your keyword term (exact match domain) in the source code is being seen as keyword stuffing.

It would be interesting to know exactly when the rankings went into freefall, but my guess would be perhaps around the end of April.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[RyanKent]

Have you tried going to Google WMT and performing a Fetch as Googlebot? Do you have the old GA tracking code from before the asynchronous code was used?

If the answer to both questions is yes, try updating your GA code.

http://blog.jitbit.com/2012/08/fixing-googlebot-cant-access-your-site.html