The ever annoying google ?!

hi guys and gals,

my website has a google problem it seems.
www.chocolateriewanders.com

history:
- oct. 2005 put online
- jan. 2006 indexed and recognized by major SE (incl. google)
- march 2006 fairly high ranked in major SE (except google)

the ranking fell dramatically in google when i eliminated one similar hidden layer on all pages (contained mostly keywords in a meaningful paragraph) i did eliminate that layer to prevent sandboxing by google - the design of the page does not incorporate too much text as it is right now - especially the index page ....

i do have a validated, working sitemap with google - the googlebot comes by almost everyday to check on the index page and then every week or so to check up on ALL other pages. a check with site:www.chocolateriewanders.com reveals that google has NOT the other pages in its index though. i find this odd and was wondering if there is sth. else i could do to make sure that i somehow didn't mess with beloved google .....

i am not 100% sure anymore if at one given time google had all of my pages listed in its index - i almost don't think so - only always 4 of the total pages .... (2 of those are no more by now) - speaking of which, how can i get a SE friendly redirect / custom redirect page to the main page? any rules to follow ... timeout or similar?

thank you for reading this 'meant to be short, but got long' post

What you have and what you should do:

1 - Actually you have no links from other sites.
2 - Keywords should have comma or not, don't use them in groups
3 -I don't have a clue about it but google may have a criteria like the meta tags shouldn't be closed
4 - Use headers
5 - I don't think people will look at your descriptive page titles, so use them for seo.
6 - Find a smart way to get more words in your content for density without cheating (like write a paragraph that what you do best with choc.'s)
7 - Submit your page to relevant sites, at the searches "chocolateriewanders" has 22 google sepr! this really sux! (worst in yahoo)
8 - And my best advice,, at anyone here ,, submit your page to the dmoz

Don't panic to much. I launched a site around the same time and I had a similar problem.

Google foudn my site, indexed it, and kept on going. Early this year Google told me that I had over 25,000 pages indexed. I have no idea how as the site doesn't have anywhere near that many. At the moment it's 6-700 pages. But this did calm down and get back to normal. But it still took a while to get the pages indexed.

To get pages indexed faster, get more links in, and you'll see the activity growing.

thank you for your comments - i am working on it right now.

i am also using this as an opportunity to redesign my page a little .... waht i changed can be viewed here:
http://www.chocolateriewanders.com/new/new2/index5.html

i put in a paragraph on the top to get on the keyword count. i think it looks pretty good too.
i lost the graphics (which i was pretty proud of once) and go with a cleaner 2d look.

uh, i submitted to dmoz month and month ago, but cannot read any indication of their activity


what does that mean and how can i fix it?

also, you stated that i don't have links from other sites - but i do have a few in directories and for example in some family members' homepages .... those are somehow not indexed/recognized either ..... shall i go with more directories?

paragraph looks better but formerly look was smarter,, new look sux,,

go with more relevant directories and try to add your links to local shop's websites. Google doesnt show all backlinks to your sites but i think yahoo do. You have few backlinks at yahoo. Make your sie stronger and get moreeeeeeeeee links. Also regard my other advices. and more is, use title, alt attributes also.