Why SEO - ‘Why …’ SEO queries people actually use
Continuing this week’s series of articles based on search referrals for SEO Theory, the following list of queries represent questions people asked the search engines in the month of October 2008. They may or may not have found what they were looking for when they visited SEO Theory. There are some near-duplicate variations in this list. I will group them together and provide only once answer for each group.
Some of Google’s competitors (including Ask, Live, and Yahoo!) also provide several search verticals AND they use multiple data centers.
It seems that Google (and probably the other major search engines) cycles through IP addresses when changing out infrastructures, Web indexes, etc. These kinds of major shifts in technology and data may result in IP addresses effectively being “retired” — at least temporarily. I have found that some business networks may set their DNS tables to point to specific IP addresses for search engines.
I don’t know why that happens — in fact it happens here — but it definitely causes some people to see very different search results from the rest of us. I have actually learned to tolerate this oddness because sometimes my team’s research capabilities are enhanced by looking at different search results.
Each data center does its own crawling. You may see your site in one data center’s results but not in another.
Of course, there are other reasons why your site might vanish: the search engines occasionally dump their data and rebuild their indexes. Or some sites lose too many inbound links and they “fall out” of the indexes until they are rediscovered through other links. Or some sites go offline for a long enough period that the search engines delist them (someone may also take advantage of your downtime to trick Google into blocking your site for six months). And you could do something sneaky that causes your site to get banned (or maybe someone else snuck in under your radar and poisoned your site).
Why Is My Ranking Dropping
Why Google Drops In SERPs
Why Google Rankings Suddenly Drop
Why Has My Site Lost Ranking
Why Does My Ranking On Google Drop?
Why Did My Google Rankings Drop? - These days it’s a rare site that maintains a steady position in the search results for anything other than a branding query. Generally speaking, if your site loses search results referrals it’s because of one or more of these reasons:
- You did something with your site
- Your competitors did something with their sites
- The search engines did something with their algorithms or data
- Searchers change the way they search
People may stop clicking on the most popular site, or they may filter the most popular site out of their results, or they may change the form of their queries. Your site may not actually lose rankings; it may simply lose traffic. But if you have definitely lost rankings, there are plenty of plausible explanations for why. You just have to eliminate the implausible explanations to find the plausible ones.
Why Does Only 1 Page Seem To Appear In SERPs - Are you doing a site search and only seeing one page from your site? Are you doing an obscure query and only seeing one result? Are you running multiple queries and only seeing one page from your site appearing in any of them?
This query provides a good example of just how ambiguous long-tail queries can be. Just because you add more words to your search expression doesn’t mean you’re being precise and exact.
Generally speaking, weak optimization could lead to all of these situations. Or it could be that someone is being impatient about a new site. You may need to wait anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to see your site indexed and ranking in search results. It depends on the query and it depends on the resources you have available for getting your site crawled and indexed (and on how you design your site).
It’s extremely difficult to compensate for poor on-site optimization with links, which leads me to ….
Why Doesn’t Google Index My External Links To Sites That Have My Link?
Why Doesn’t Google Pick Up My External Links
Why Doesn’t Google’s “link:” Function Work
Why Doesn’t My Inbound External Links Get Crawled
Why Doesn’t My Link Show Up In Google Link Analysis? - People are so obsessed with links they don’t understand that links aren’t everything. If I had to pick the one most important factor in search engine optimization, I would say it must be a decent understanding of what search is all about. Most SEOs don’t get that.
Search is not about links. It’s about finding information. That’s the bigger picture. The SEO community has hypnotized itself into thinking all you need is links and you’re set. In today’s search, most links don’t pass value. So if you’re wondering why the links you created don’t seem to be working, it’s because they never had a chance to work in the first place. If you’re wondering why sites with fewer inbound links than yours manage to outrank you, it’s because most of your links aren’t helping you as much as you have been led to believe they do.
Google’s link function works just fine. But it only reports a random selection of backlinks that Google has indexed. If you’re comparing your Google links to your Yahoo! links (or other link source links), stop that! You’re not getting any useful information from other services. Only Google knows which links it has indexed and which of those indexed links pass value. And Google doesn’t show you all your links (not even in Google Webmaster Tools). They have been quite honest about these limitations.
If you want to get Google to index the pages that link to your pages, you can link to those pages from your site, but if you don’t already have a lot of value in Google’s algorithmic estimation you’re not going to help those pages help you. Call this the Jerry Maguire Principle, where you’re asking your linking partners to help you help them.
But keep in mind that Google is maintaining two Web Search indexes: the Main Web Index and the Supplemental Index. Just because Google no longer labels its Supplemental Results doesn’t mean they went away. It just means that Google is being sneaky and deceptive, tricking you into thinking it treats all Web pages equally.
Your link analysis may be flawed because you’re not accounting for the possibility that some of your links (perhaps all of them) are located on pages in Google’s Supplemental Index. Or you could simply be getting links from sites that are not indexed, won’t get indexed, and therefore won’t help you get indexed.
A good rule of thumb when you’re obtaining links is to apply the Inverse Value Probability Principle: the easier it is to get a link, the less likely the link is to pass any sort of value. Anyone can get a forum or blog comment link. But how many people can get a front-page link from a discriminating Web site? Not many, I assure you.
Why I Can’t Indexed My Site In Google? - It should be pretty easy to get most sites indexed in Google. Getting them to rank is another issue. Let’s assume this question really is only concerned with getting indexed in Google. There are many potential reasons for why Google may not be indexing your site:
- You registered or received a domain that has been banned by Google
- You are using a free hosting service that has been abused by SEOs
- You have only obtained links from unreliable sources (usually easy links)
- You have not obtained any links
- You’re expecting Google to show your site too soon (you should wait 2-8 weeks)
- You’re violating Google’s Webmaster guidelines, perhaps thinking it’s “only a little violation” and because a lot of other sites get away with it you should, too
- You’re blocking Google from indexing your site with meta tags or robots.txt
- Google is unable to reach your server or is getting timeouts on page fetches
- Your content is provided in a format that Google cannot index
Those are the most common reasons people cannot get into Google. There are undoubtedly other reasons. Every one of these situations can be rectified in some way. You may need to file a reinclusion request (Googlers say they attach no stigma to anyone who does so). You may need to use a new hosting provider. You should create a checklist and evaluate it carefully.
Why Optimize “page names” - This is not a requirement for search engine optimization but it IS one more thing you can do. A few years ago SEOs passed around a myth that you had to use relevant keywords in your domain names. That was complete and absolute nonsense. It certainly can help, but it’s not a requirement. The same is true of page names (file names, URLs). You can get a little boost from including keywords in the page names but you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to.
You can get 1234.html to rank for a query about as easily as you can get keyword-keyword.html to rank for the same query. Don’t agonize over these little details.
Why Use Moving Average - Moving averages reveal trends and changes in direction for statistically-acceptable data. If your moving average is going down rather than up, you should employ a different strategy from that you would use when your moving average is going up.
Why Use Multiple Domains - Many firms protect brand name value by registering multiple domains and redirecting them to a primary content site. The search engines thus associate all those domains with only one Web site (thus avoiding duplicate content issues).
Some companies create multiple brands in their marketing programs and it often makes sense to deploy a unique Web site for each brand.
Some companies also deploy subscription services on separate domains from their main Web presences.
All of these practices are perfectly acceptable to the search engines and public.
Why You Should Have A Link Page - Not everyone should have a link page, but it does make sense for many sites to provide a list of resources their visitors may find useful. Grouping those resources on their own single page may be the best thing to do.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ November 5, 2008