In Today's Issue
Search Engine Marketing
---> Targeting Different Countries
---> Supplemental Index
---> HTML in File Name
---> Manually Submit to Search Engines
---> Forwarded Domains
---> Ampersands and Search Engines
High Rankings Happenings
---> Small-Business SEO Package Starting at $749/month
---> May In-person SEO Class Available
---> Recession Buster SEO Website Review
Twitter Question of the Week
---> What is THE most important SEO tactic?
Stuff You Might Like
---> High Rankings Online SEO Course
Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week
---> Questions About Link Building
Advisor Wrap-up
---> Told you he was a genius! Introduction
Hey everyone!
It's that time of the month again when we have our High Rankings SEO Q&A Bonanza issue. If you're a new subscriber, that simply means that I pull out my SEO mailbag from the past few weeks and post some of the questions with my answers. It's a great way to learn about a variety of SEO topics in one fell swoop!
Enjoy! – Jill
Search Engine Marketing Issues
++Targeting Different Countries++
 Dear Jill,
As a long-term subscriber I would like to ask for your advice concerning optimisation of an e-commerce site for multiple countries.
Specifically I am in the UK and have a client in Australia operating an e-commerce site. The site is well established and ranks well in the UK (where it is hosted) but not very well in the USA or Australia.
My client believes this is because the site is hosted in the UK and that in order to succeed in the bigger US market he needs to host in the USA (same for Australia).
He is asking if he should operate 3 sites – one hosted in each country – and I wondered if you could comment on the importance of hosting in the target country, and the implications of having what will essentially be 3 duplicates of the same site – one for .co.uk, one for .com and one for .com.au.
Any other suggestions will be welcome.
Regards,
Ian
++Jill's Response++
Hi Ian,
The country code top-level domain (ccTLD), such as .co.uk and .com.au, is more important to Google for determining the target country than where the hosted server is physically located. That said, while a .com domain does target the US audience, it's not actually a US domain, but a worldwide one. Therefore, to target the US market, you might want to physically host the .com in the US.
There are a few additional options open to you. You could have one .com website and use different subdomains or subdirectories for each country you want to target. For example, uk.example.com and aus.example.com for subdomains, or www.example.com/uk and www.example.com/aus as subdirectories. If you go this route, you'd need to set up each subdomain or subdirectory in Google Webmaster Tools to target the individual country assigned to it.
The problem with that method is that it is only a Google solution and is not going to help with the other search engines.
If you already have the specific ccTLDs for the UK and Australia, you are better off using those domains and creating sites that target those geographical regions. While you will likely have duplicate content because they're all English-speaking countries, it shouldn't be a problem because the search engines will typically choose the correct version of your site depending on where the searcher is located. You can see this yourself, if you already have separate ccTLD websites, by heading over to google.co.uk and searching for your site by name. It's likely that the UK version will show up there rather than the other versions.
Hope this helps!
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Supplemental Index++
Dear Jill,
I'm still working on my site's link popularity as we speak. But due to my very low link popularity, is that enough to send my pages to Google's Supplemental Index?
Jesse
++Jill's Response++
Hi Jesse,
First, a quick word about Google's supplemental index for those who may not know what it is. A few years ago, you could often find results in Google that actually said something like, "These sites are in our supplemental index."
While there is no supplemental index label in the Google search results anymore, there still is a supplemental index, and it is indeed where pages that have little value can end up. For the most part, pages in the supplemental index are those whose content is the same or very similar to other pages, and/or they don't have enough PageRank (the real kind, not the toolbar kind) to be placed in the regular index.
So in answer to your question, yes, very low link popularity can throw pages of your site into the supplemental index. It's doubtful that the top-level pages of your site would be there unless they were dupes of other pages, were extremely new and had no links at all, or most of the links pointing to the site were of very low quality.
The pages that typically are found in the supplemental results are those that are buried very deeply within low PageRanked sites – in other words, a site that doesn't have enough overall PageRank to spread some around to its deeper pages.
The way out of the supplemental index is to gain more overall link popularity and do a better job linking internally to the supplemental pages. Or, alternatively, try to gain links that point directly to the pages stuck in the supplemental listings.
The good news is that most pages in the supplemental index, while perhaps important to your site visitors, often don't need to be found directly from the search engines.
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++HTML in File Name++
Hi Jill,
I hope this email finds you well and business is good. We are doing some redevelopment on our CMS and the functionality. To date, all URLs were search engine friendly – that is, they excluded the characters ?, &, %, and =, but we did not allow for them to be rewritten so they can include key phrases on all levels. Now we are developing the package so this can be done.
Do we need to have .html at the end of the URL?
For example, this page:
www.example.com/directory_example/checklist.html
would be:
www.example.com/directory_example/checklist.
Any advice you can give will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Sandra
++Jill's Response++
Hi Sandra,
You don't need to have .html at the end of your URLs. You don't really need keywords either, but if you are planning to put them in, you don't want to use underscores, as in your example URLs. You should use dashes (–) to separate the words instead.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Manually Submit to Search Engines++
Hi Jill,
There is one question that keeps confusing me – should one manually submit a site to a search engine? I read conflicting advice on this topic. If I recall, you have said you never do it, and I am wondering what the pros and cons are. Can you elaborate?
Thanks,
Kathleen
++Jill's Response++
Hi Kathleen,
There are no pros or cons to submitting to the spidering search engines. It's simply an unnecessary waste of time and bandwidth because it does absolutely nothing.
Submitting to directories is a different story, however. Directories are not like search engines because they don't have spiders that find URLs. So if you want to be listed in directories, you do have to manually submit to them to the proper category.
Hope this helps!
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Forwarded Domains++
Hi Jill,
I have one main website and own about 10 other domain name versions that are similar. Will I get penalized by the search engines if I have the 10 other domain names forwarded to my one website? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ted
++Jill's Response++
Hi Ted,
"Forwarded" could mean a lot of different things when it comes to SEO. You might have your domains as parked aliases, in which case they could all end up indexed by the search engines. While there is no duplicate content penalty, it's still not a good idea to go this route.
What you want to do is 301-redirect your additional domains to your main website. It won't help you with anything in the search engines, but it won't hurt you either, and is fine.
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Ampersands and Search Engines++
Dear Jill,
On my web page I have H2 tags that include the HTML ampersand (&) character code.
For example: Health & Beauty
I've been told that this confuses crawlers. Can you please advise if this has any effect on the search engine results for my site?
I would appreciate your help.
Rita
++Jill's Response++
Hi Rita,
No, it doesn't confuse the crawlers. They convert the HTML & to the ampersand character. Google also knows that an ampersand and the word "and" mean the same thing.
That said, a quick search at Google for "health & beauty" and "health and beauty" (without quotes on either) does show slightly different results. You may want to take a look at that to decide if you want to use the ampersand or the word "and."
You may want to use both forms in order to target both types of search queries. Of course, my guess is that not that many people search with the ampersand character because it's a bit of a pain to type.
Hope this helps!
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
Do you have an SEO question you'd like answered? Please submit it to me via our SEO Question form.
P.S. If anyone would like to republish any of the above articles, please email me your request and where they will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with them for your site.
Twitter Question of the WeekThis week, I asked my Twitter followers:
++What do you feel is THE most important SEO tactic for any website?++
Here's what they said:
Laurent8: TITLE + Anchor Text and you got yourself a (basic but most important) SEO strategy.
josiahcole: Content creation. Without unique content you have nothing to market and nothing for the visitor; inbound links will be organic.
netrafic: Browser titles that are congruent with page content tailored towards a popular keyword term or two.
semdave: Content development tailored to meet the information needs of your appropriate audience. User-friendly content = strong SEO.
AVirtualEdge: Web content and backlink quality.
designrox17: Would it be keywords? I'm new to this.
Jill's comment: Well, if designrox17 meant keyword research (and not Meta keywords!), then the newbie's the one who got it right! While content creation, titles, and anchor text are extremely important, if you don't first research the keywords, they could all be for nothing.
Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter
Share your comments and thoughts here.
Stuff You Might Like ++High Rankings Online SEO Course++
 We heard your many requests for us to offer our SEO training course online. In response, we partnered with the online training experts at Lynda.com to offer you "Getting Started With SEO." This SEO course is taught by me and covers the entire spectrum of SEO – from understanding how search engines work, to keyword research, site architecture, website content, link building and measuring your success.
The best part is that Lynda.com is extremely affordable! You can register for a 1-month membership for only $25 and gain access to my entire SEO course as well as the thousands of other courses in their online training library.
You can learn more, watch the live introductory video (plus a few of the course videos) or register for the entire SEO course.
Of course, we're still offering our in-person SEO training classes as well. You can register for the May class now.
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Questions About Link Building++
Forum member "ddzc" asked if building too many links too quickly, all with the same anchor text, would be considered spam by the search engines.
See what other forum members said, and/or share your own comments here.
Advisor Wrap-up
That's all for today!
It's been hectic around High Rankings headquarters as our small-business SEO packages have brought in a few new clients. It's always fun to get started with an SEO strategy for new clients because every site is different and has different needs. We can still take on a few more small businesses if you're interested. See if your website and business are a good fit for our program here.
On the home front, our genius son Tim proved that it wasn't just his proud mom and dad who thought he was a genius, by receiving the amazing total score of 2310 on his SATs. His individual scores were: Critical Reading 780, Math 770 and Writing 760. This should help in his quest to go to MIT for college.
Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill
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