Adding more content - fearing diluting PR and getting SI probs

[privatefleet]

Hi all,

Have been having a bit of a problem with many of my pages appearing in the supplemental index. After lots of reaseach, I've come to the conclusion that it's come down to content/PR ratio - ie I haven't got enough incoming links to pass on enough PR to keep many of these pages out of the SI.

So I have two questions:

1) does this mean it's pointless adding any more content and I should just concentrate 100% on building IBLs?

I've been furiously trying to build links for the last month or two and it hasn't helped all that much. Also as quality link building often relies on fresh and quality content, there's a conflict there. If I create pages as 'link bait' there's a danger that if no-one links to this page it will just compound the problem and further dilute the PR

2) if I do add content, is it best to add fewer bigger pages rather than many smaller more targetted pages. In an ideal world the latter would be preferable as it means one can target strongly for certain keywords but maybe by putting all the content on one page it conserves more PR juice?

With this 2nd question I'm thinking about a glossary with a couple of hundred terms defined and described. Originally I had thought to have a little page (and possibly image) for each item. This would mean I could use the image, page title, keyword density etc to do some good on-page SEO. However will this just dilute PR so much that none of the pages make the main index. The alternatives (A massive page with hundreds of definitions and thousands of words, or 26 pages split by letter etc) don't sound too user friendly.

Thanks in advance

Site is Private Fleet - New Car Broker obtaining fleet discounts on new dealer cars in Australia : Private Fleet : if that's at all relevant.

Dave

[crankydave]

Right off the bat the first problem I see is the duplicated meta descriptions. This can easily push pages into the SI. You need for them to be unique for each page.

Dave

[Peter (IMC)]

Maybe I'm too sleepy at this moment... I don't see any pages in the supplemental index and neither do I see the same meta description in all pages.

What Google shows in the snippets when you do a site:www.domain.com search aren't the meta descriptions.

[Webnauts]

I was just wondering, how could you figure out that you are in the supplemental?
I found for this domain privatefleet.com.au, 922 pages being indexed, which 726 of them are in the supplemental index.

There are many reasons that you can be in the supplemental index. That requires an investigation and then planning how to deal with those issues.

THAT HURTS!

Read here why: How often does Google Update PR?

[privatefleet]

Thanks for the replies guys...

Most of the meta descriptions are unique but some are duplicate so I'll go through and make sure each is 100% unique. Thanks crankydave, that's an easy one to fix but I doubt it will solve the prob completely.

I found this tool - Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator which is pretty handy.

It's actually very interesting. I was testing out a few competitor sites... eg if you run it for

Used Cars - New Cars - Search New & Used Cars For Sale - carsales.com.au you get

Google has a total of 24700 pages indexed from Used Cars - New Cars - Search New & Used Cars For Sale - carsales.com.au
1690 are in the main index
23010 are in the supplemental index

This means an amazing 93% of carsale's pages are in the SI

and then run for Used Cars & New Cars for Sale | Car Sales | Car Reviews | drive.com.au (a direct competitor)


Google has a total of 136000 pages indexed from Used Cars & New Cars for Sale | Car Sales | Car Reviews | drive.com.au
70300 are in the main index
65700 are in the supplemental index

Which is only 48%

However, the fact is that CarSales get's heaps more traffic than Drive (over twice as much I think) despite having a fraction of the amount of pages Drive has in the main index.

So whilst anyone would want as many pages as poss in the main index, it doesn't seem to be the be all and end all (disclaimer: of course both these websites will attract traffic from lots of other sources other than organic searches)

Anyway, I'm digressing - anyone got any comments regarding my original question - about whether adding fresh content will further cause SI angst and if you do, what's the best way to do this and avoid these issues?

Thanks again

[privatefleet]

oh and thanks for the link to that tool, Webnauts - tried to download a few weeks ago but ran into problems...

I'll see if I can do it again cos it sure would be valuable

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by privatefleet

Have been having a bit of a problem with many of my pages appearing in the supplemental index. After lots of reaseach, I've come to the conclusion that it's come down to content/PR ratio - ie I haven't got enough incoming links to pass on enough PR to keep many of these pages out of the SI.

Correct.

From Fall weather forecast

PageRank is the primary factor determining whether a url is in the main web index vs. the supplemental results

From Infrastructure status, January 2007

Having urls in the supplemental results doesn’t mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank.

There are cases where Google decides that the content of a page is barely worth indexing in which case it may end up in the Supplemental index but generally speaking, PageRank is the deciding factor.

Duplicate content, by itself and duplicate titles/descriptions/keywords/blah/blah/blah have nothing to do with a page being in the Supplemental index.

Having duplicate content may indirectly cause a page or pages to go Supplemental but it would be a PageRank dilution issue instead of being directly caused by duplication.

Originally Posted by privatefleet

So I have two questions:

1) does this mean it's pointless adding any more content and I should just concentrate 100% on building IBLs?

It is NEVER pointless to add more content!

But, regarding the Supplemental index independently, inbounds are what you need, along with making sure that whatever PageRank you have is funneled to where it needs to be to keep your most important pages in the Main index.

Originally Posted by privatefleet

I've been furiously trying to build links for the last month or two and it hasn't helped all that much. Also as quality link building often relies on fresh and quality content, there's a conflict there. If I create pages as 'link bait' there's a danger that if no-one links to this page it will just compound the problem and further dilute the PR

There are ways to keep a page from accruing PageRank from other pages in your site.

Also, if there are pages that are indexed that don't really need to be, "About us", "Copyright", "Privacy" or other types of pages that people really aren't going to be searching for, they are not doing you any good in the index so why not disallow them in robots.txt and nofollow links from your site to them?

No sense in wasting PageRank on pages that aren't likely to show up in searches anyway or aren't likely to contain content that people are likely to search for.

Add to that, making sure the pages you really care about "get their's" before other pages will help keep your more important pages above water.

Originally Posted by privatefleet

2) if I do add content, is it best to add fewer bigger pages rather than many smaller more targetted pages. In an ideal world the latter would be preferable as it means one can target strongly for certain keywords but maybe by putting all the content on one page it conserves more PR juice?

Unless you are talking about a lot of pages, it won't make all that much difference.

But all things being equal, fewer bigger pages would be better.

Originally Posted by privatefleet

With this 2nd question I'm thinking about a glossary with a couple of hundred terms defined and described. Originally I had thought to have a little page (and possibly image) for each item. This would mean I could use the image, page title, keyword density etc to do some good on-page SEO. However will this just dilute PR so much that none of the pages make the main index. The alternatives (A massive page with hundreds of definitions and thousands of words, or 26 pages split by letter etc) don't sound too user friendly.

Even were PageRank not an issue, I wouldn't chop up a glossary anyway, unless you wanted more page loads for ads or something. I'd put them all on one page and then put a in-page-link menu at the top of the page so that a visitor can see a list of all the terms and quickly go to ones of interest.

At least that's how I see things, your mileage may vary.

[isharli]

Please clarify...does one need to have more inbound links to pages that are categorized as supplemental in order to get them out of that category?

[Webnauts]

I started a discussion in my own forums about the supplemental results. You might would like to check it out too: Do you have pages in the supplemental results? - SEO Workers

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by isharli

Please clarify...does one need to have more inbound links to pages that are categorized as supplemental in order to get them out of that category?

Of course links directly to the Supplemental index pages will help pull them out faster but links to other pages within the site, depending on navigation, will likely help, although at a slower rate.

[dvduval]

I truly believe that if you add good and original content that is good enough that people enjoy reading it, you will slowly build readership and traffic. I think you should think about your readers first, and search engines second. You may only have a few at first, but that will change over time with a continued effort.

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by dvduval

I truly believe that if you add good and original content that is good enough that people enjoy reading it, you will slowly build readership and traffic. I think you should think about your readers first, and search engines second. You may only have a few at first, but that will change over time with a continued effort.

If one is willing to wait it out or, "Build it and they will come." that is perfect advice.

Consider that any brick and mortar business can take up to 3 years to show profitability, the Internet is often no different.

From my experience what I have learned is that it is a good idea to get enough PageRank to get a few important pages ranking well and then leave it to "nature" to do the rest.

But, while nature is doing its thing, see what you can do about getting more eyeballs on your pages independent of search engines, i.e. social networking and link sharing sites.

In the long run, the more eyeballs on a given page, the more chances to earn links naturally.

All that said, just like there are short cuts one can take in the meat world to TRY to reach success sooner, short cuts exist in the virtual world but there are easily as many risks by taking that route in either realm.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by cass-hacks

Of course links directly to the Supplemental index pages will help pull them out faster but links to other pages within the site, depending on navigation, will likely help, although at a slower rate.

Common Causes of Supplemental Pages:

• Pages due to canonicalization problems, e.g duplicated content, too much content similarity;
• Pages with low or no content;
• Orphaned web pages. Pages that no one links to, including your own;
• Error pages, if a site does not use If-Modified-Since, Last Modified and/or Expires rules;
• Poor website navigation;
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords (keyword stuffing);
• Too low PageRank;
• Long URLs, especially with long parameters, starting with a question mark (?) and being separated with an ampersand (&) and are not rewriten;
• Suspicious pages for spamindexing, like non-unique and irrelevant to page content heading tags, meta tags, or linking to bad neighborhoods, etc.

So do you want to say here that linking to supplemental pages is the best solution? If the pages have too low PageRank I could understand and would agree, if they are important pages though. But what if the problem is one of the other cases?

[Webnauts]

Sorry. Duplicated my mistake my above post.

Mods please delete this one. Thanks.

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

So do you want to say here that linking to supplemental pages is the best solution? If the pages have too low PageRank I could understand and would agree, if they are important pages though. But what if the problem is one of the other cases?

What I was replying to was a question about getting more inbound links. More inbound links directly to a page in the Supplemental index is more likely to have a positive effect since "PageRank is the primary factor determining whether a url is in the main web index vs. the supplemental results"

As for the other causes,

Pages due to canonicalization problems, e.g duplicated content, too much content similarity; doesn't seem to mention anything about about Supplemental pages unless I missed something.

Pages with low or no content; doesn't seem to either.

Error pages, if a site does not use If-Modified-Since, Last Modified and/or Expires rules; again, no mention of Supplemental indexed pages being the result.

Actually, none of the links you list say anything about those problems causing pages to be moved to or start out and stay in the Supplemental index.

The link to the page about too low of PageRank would be a good place for Google to mention the association but they didn't.

The only references by a Googler regarding a cause for a given page being in the Supplemental index that I have found is Fall weather forecast and Infrastructure status, January 2007 although that is not to say other info from Googlers isn't out there somewhere, just that I haven't found it.

[Webnauts]

If you claim now that what I posted above is not correct , to be specific about the causes of the supplemental results, then I feel very sorry for you.

But before I add something else here, may I ask if you are a professional SEO?