Googlebot, Why Do you Tease Us?
Website owners, your search engine rankings may be suffering! Google recently increased in their indexing and storage capabilities. Just what are the ramifications for the millions of businesses jockeying for top search engine positions?
Estimates are that Google increased their index 33% to 8-10 billion pages. With this increase we also saw an increase in Googlebot’s (Google’s indexing spider) abilities. Googlebot is busy indexing more pages, including pages it was unable to index in the past.
In the past, database driven website solutions such as .php and .asp were difficult for spiders to read. Solutions like Mod rewrite exist to fix this problem, but most dynamic websites continue to be unmodified.
If your dynamic website was visited after Google’s database increase, chances are the dynamic pages were indexed! Your website, which may have been nowhere in the search results, could now be visible. But will your rankings increase?
The old theory said the more pages that you have indexed, the better. This allowed for a large “keyword safety net.” Your link popularity and reputation could also increase dramatically. Does this new change mean an exponential increase of qualified traffic to your website?
There are a large number of dynamic websites that have never been optimized, and were not designed using search engine optimization. If this describes your website, BEWARE! Such websites may have enjoyed good rankings for static or non-dynamic pages in the past. However, once all of the dynamic pages get newly indexed, this may change.
Dynamic websites often have duplicate content for products. Such products usually have different part numbers, but with the same description. In some cases, the same description for one product can be repeated hundreds of times on different pages. Search engines do not like duplicate content, especially when it is on the same IP address. Not only can your website loose its “credibility” with duplicate content, but your static pages can loose their high rankings.
There is, however, some good news. You can take advantage of your newly indexed pages and give your website a big boost in the rankings. If you have duplicate content, you can do one of two things. Either put a “no index” Meta Tag on all duplicate pages, or change your descriptions to eliminate duplicate content.
Ideally, all of your product descriptions should be somewhat different. Make sure you use important keywords in all descriptions, but don’t overdo it. Next, you should take advantage of the newly indexed pages. Do this by setting up a linking strategy to increase your website’s link popularity. Then construct a site map that will have a link to all of your important pages. You should also make sure that there is a link on each page to your most important pages. Finally, make sure that you use absolute links to spread your ranking throughout your website. With these changes you should notice a boost in your Google PageRank. You should also gain higher rankings for your important keywords.
Search engines continue to change and evolve, and what is good for your customers should always come first. As long as you continue to follow the terms and guidelines of the major search engines, you should rank well. Google isn’t the only big guy on the block, but if you optimize for Google you will usually rank on the other engines as well.
Search Engine Optimization companies keep up with of the continual changes taking place in the world of internet marketing. Superior SEO companies keep abreast of not only the basics discussed here, but also the finer nuances that can make the difference between fair to good search placement and first-rate placement. Working with a top-notch Search Engine Optimization company can greatly increase your online success.
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