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Ross Dunn Answers SEO Questions - #3
By Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
» Click here for  PDF &  Word Versions
If you have a question you would like to ask please send it
over. Please keep in mind, however, that I do not have the time
to review websites free of charge but I will do my best to answer
pointed questions like the ones shown below. Please submit your
SEO questions
here.
Question: “Supplementary Results”
Hey, I have been searching around forums
and such, trying to get an answer and can't seem to find one.
What determines whether
pages get sent to the supplemental or omitted results section
of Google? The closest info I could find is that means that
there is duplicate content. However, on my reciprocal links
pages, there is no unique content as I'm sure those links are
posted on many hundreds of other websites duplicated across
the web. What can I do to get my currently "omitted results" pages
into the main index section of Google? Thanks in advance for
your help.
Answer:
This is a great question and one that, astonishingly, I have
never been asked which made it even more fun to answer. First,
however, I want to provide a little background for readers
that may not be familiar with this topic.
What is a Supplemental Result?
Supplemental results are generally pages that Google has determined
to be secondary to other, more relevant pages that Google
has indexed on your website. In effect, supplementary results
are actually a secondary database of results that are only
called upon when the most obscure queries force Google to
check all its indexed resources.
What is an Omitted Result?
Omitted results are supplemental results that are not listed
within your search results because they are even less relevant
than the supplemental results shown.
Does Your Site Have Supplemental Results?
If your site has more than a few pages it is very likely you
do have supplemental pages in Google. To find out if you do
just go to Google and type in the query shown in red (including
the asterisks): site:www.yourdomain.com ***
This search will provide you with a listing of all supplemental
and omitted results for your website.
What Determines if a Page Will Become a Supplemental Result?
An indexed page becomes a supplementary result when it is less
relevant than other page(s) in your website. As a result,
the best way to avoid supplemental pages is by ensuring that
every page within your site uses unique content and provides
excellent and relevant information. This way you will have
a better chance of having Google determine that your pages
are second to none. Note that this does, by no means, guarantee
you will not have supplemental pages. After all, you may have
a page with “A+” content and a page devoted to
a similar topic with “A” content. In this case
the lesser page may still become supplemental because no matter
how good it is, it is still second to the better one.
Should You Consider Supplementary Results Bad?
In general supplementary results should be avoided because they
are pages less likely to be found in a search engine. If,
however, your website has been finely crafted and you can
see that your supplementary results still represent good quality
pages you may simply be a victim of Google’s need to
perform content triage; picking only the best content and
leaving the others to fade into supplementary purgatory.
Additional Information
If you want to look into this further here are some links
to more information on Supplementary Results:
- http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3071371
- http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=141198
Question: “Good URLs, Session Variables and Backlinks”
Ross,
I really liked your September 7th, 2006 article on Search
Engine Strategies for Webmasters. It broke down the important
design pitfalls and solutions in a simple but thorough article.
I do have a couple of questions, that it would please me if
you answered.
1) Is it ok to have .php extensions in the URL as long as
you substitute the "?", "=", and "@" characters
in the addresses with "/"?
2) Are SESSION variables and POST variables friendly to search
engines?
3) Do you need to pay to get top 10 or top 20 rankings?
4) How much relevance is added by having links from other
domains to your website?
Thanks again for the great article,
Jim
Answer:
Hi Jim, thank you for the accolades, I assume you are thanking
me for my “Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly? Your
Personal Checklist” article. I know it got published
in some places on September 7. I have answered your questions
below:
1) Is it ok to have .php extensions
in the URL as long as you substitute the "?", "=", and "@" characters
in the addresses with "/"?
In general your statement is correct. If you replace the extraneous
characters (?, &, =) with brackets you will improve the
search engine friendliness of your website. But be sure that
you do not have too many directories appearing within your
URL’s because Google has been known to stop indexing
sites that have lengthy directory structures. This video
from Google Engineer Matt Cutts describes this very issue.
For samples and more tips on improving your URL’s please
go to the second half of my SEO Answers article from August
2nd where I discuss “What Are Good and Bad URL’s
and How to Fix the Bad Ones”.
2) Are SESSION variables and POST variables friendly to search
engines?
Session variables are not used by search engines so if your
site requires them you are effectively shutting the door on
search engine indexing. As for post variables, I would need
more information before I could answer this question. Generally
POST variables are passed when a user interacts using a form
so the search engine would not encounter this issue – making
it a moot point.
3) Do you need to pay to get top 10 or top 20 rankings?
There are two answers to this question:
a) Do you mean can the top positions be purchased? In effect
you can’t technically pay to get a top ranking because
those rankings are ‘organic’; they are created
not by humans but rather by software based solely on the
relevancy
and popularity of the pages that the search engine spiders
have found.
b) If you mean do you have to pay an SEO to get top organic
rankings? No you certainly do not have to pay for top rankings
on the search engines. That said, there are many situations
where it may be a smarter move for you to outsource your
search engine optimization needs. For example, are you trying
to attain
a ranking in a competitive market area? In this case obtaining
a top ranking may require a level of SEO knowledge that
you don’t have the time to attain. Your time may also
be better spent doing what you are best at; making your
business more
profitable.
If you do not want to outsource your SEO needs then there are
plenty of online forums and websites designed to provide you
with the knowledge required to conduct your own SEO. Here is
a short list:
- www.searchengineguide.com
- www.searchenginewatch.com
- www.webmasterworld.com
- and of course, StepForth’s SEO blog at news.stepforth.com
If you are looking to find the right tools I have a page that
is meant to help you which is devoted to recommended
SEO tools.
4) How much relevance is added by having links from other domains
to your website?
First, let me set the scene here. The links you are discussing
are called “backlinks” and the resulting benefit
is called “link popularity”. So, to restate the
question: “how important is link popularity to the overall
relevance of your website as perceived by the search engines?” Link
popularity is extremely important because search engines partially
determine how authoritative a website is by how many other related websites have linked to it; they are considered votes of confidence.
Note that I bolded ‘related’, this is a crucial
point because backlinks from websites that are not related to
yours can be worthless. For example, the search engines do not
consider a link from a hair salon website to a ski tour company’s
website as a very powerful vote of confidence because there
is no obvious relation between the two topics.
To top off my answers I want to also note something important
related to link building: do not sign up for a link building
program (free or not) that offers you hundreds or more links
within no time at all. The fact is that these backlinks are
not likely to be very relevant to your website AND, most importantly
if Google sees that your website has gained a ton of backlinks
in very little time they will be suspicious. It is not unheard
of for a website to be punished by Google if they appear to
have gotten a great many backlinks in a short period. Google
does not enjoy being ‘gamed’ so tread softly and
build your backlinks slowly but methodically and pay attention
to the best links. In my August SEO Answers article I provided
more backlink tips in the response titled: What Exactly Are
Good Backlinks?
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