Google’s Supplemental Index and How to Deal with It - Part 2
If not, don’t despair, I have a few more specific techniques that may help you even more. Keep reading. I have tested these techniques on a site that had quite a few supplemental pages. After making the changes, most of the pages came out of the supplemental index. It’s too early to tell what techniques moved the pages out of the index, as more testing is needed to isolate the causes.
Duplicate Content: I’m going to raise the duplicate content flag again, because I think it is very important and is related to something called ‘Canonicalization’. What that word means isn’t important right now. If you want to learn its definition, go ahead and Google it and read up, we have other issues to deal with.
Basically, in the internet SEO world, Canonicalization means to have established rules or procedures with how search bots see pages. When Google visits your website, they try to find your home page. However, there are many different ways you can access most homepages. For example, If you enter into your web browser yoursite.com and yoursite.com what page loads? The same page right? If so there is the possibility that the Googlebot will come along and index your site with and without the www. prefix. If that happens, your link popularity will be divided between the two ‘versions’ and can be seen as duplicate content (Two different URL’s with identical content). Even if you were to make all of your links back to your homepage the exact same style, outside sources may link differently to your homepage.
You can prevent both versions from being indexed by the of a use of a 301 redirect. Try copying and pasting this code into your .htaccess file. It will direct any request for a non-www page to a www prefix page. So a request for yoursite.com will get redirected to www.yoursite.com.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Continuing on the same line as the www prefix, you should also consider whether the search engines are indexing your site as index.html or ‘/’ For instance, enter your site into your browser as yoursite.com/ and yoursite.com/index.html. What happens? Both pages load the same content and once again we are faced with the possibility of two different URL’s being indexed with the exact same content. You will want to tell any bots that visit your site, how you want it indexed. By copying and pasting the code below into your .htaccess file, you will redirect any request for a index.html page to the ‘/’ page.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9} /([^/] /)*index.php HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/] /)*)index.php$ yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Meta Tags: Another reminder about your metas, particularly your description meta. Make them unique for each page. I have experience in my supplemental indexes to believe that non unique metas are a quick way to the supplemental index and unique metas can be a quick exit from the supplemental index.
Links: Quality links from quality sites. Use keywords in your anchor tags is always a good idea but I would suggest you also try to get links that are more natural. Natural meaning, not using a keyword in the link, but instead just try some like ‘Click here’ or other non keyword text. That is natural, because your average webmaster may create a link to you but may not use a keyword loaded tag like you would. To a search engine, keyword stuffed links don’t look natural. Ask yourself what another webmaster would use to link to your site?
Follow these specific techniques and with some luck, you will have many of your sites removed from the supplemental index and back in the normal Google index. My experience with these techniques has shown pages removed from the supplemental index within 2 weeks. Will this happen for you? It’s too hard to say, as each site presents its own problems and circumstances, however ignoring these issues won’t get you anywhere but a longer stay in the supplemental index.
Aiden O’Neill is a writer and editor where visitors can save $50 off webhosting with the Hassle Free consumerwebhostreview.com webhosting rebates. Read consumerwebhostreview.com/hostmonsterreviews.php hostmonster reviews, consumerwebhostreview.com/bluehostreviews.php bluehost reviews, and more reviews of webhosting companies.
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