I recently had the opportunity to ask questions of some
Google staffers. There were some questions I felt
I needed to get verification on, so when I had the opportunity
via a conference call I took it.
In this article I highlight some of the points made
during the call so you know what Google thinks.
You know its bad when you take time from your holidays
to come into work to attend a conference call.
But that's what I did a few weeks ago. You see
I had to because I was going to have the opportunity
to ask some Google employees specific questions on things
that I'd been pretty sure about, but wanted to hear
it right from the horses mouth.
The call lasted less than an hour, but in that time
I found that there were many things I figured were indeed
true. So lets start with the most obvious:
Is PageRank still important?
The short answer is yes PageRank has always
been important to Google. Naturally they couldn't
go into details but it is as I suspected. Google
still uses the algorithm to help determine rankings.
Where it falls in the algo mix, though, is up for speculation.
My feeling however is that they've simply moved where
the PageRank value is applied in the grand scheme of
things. If you want to know what I think, be sure
to read this article.
Are dynamic URLs bad?
Google says that a dynamic URL with 2 parameters
should get indexed. When we pressed a bit
on the issue we also found that URLs themselves don't
contribute too much to the overall ranking algorithms.
In other words, a page named Page1.asp will likely perform
as well as Keyword.asp.
The whole variable thing shouldn't come as a surprise.
It is true that Google will indeed index dynamic URLs
and I've seen sites with as many as 4 variables get
indexed. The difference however is that in almost
all cases I've seen the static URLs outrank the dynamic
URLs especially in highly competitive or even moderately
competitive keyword spaces.
Is URL rewriting OK in Google s eyes?
Again, the answer is yes, provided the URLs aren't too
long. While the length of the URL isn't necessarily
an issue, if they get extremely long they can cause
problems.
In my experience, long rewritten URLs perform just fine.
The important thing is the content on the page.
That was a common theme throughout the call
content is king. Sure optimized meta tags, effective
interlinking and externalizing JavaScript all help,
but in the end if the content isn't there the site won't
do well.
Do you need to use the Google Sitemap tool?
If your site is already getting crawled effectively
by Google you do not need to use the Google sitemap
submission tool.
The sitemap submission tool was created by Google to
provide a way for sites which normally do not get crawled
effectively to now become indexed by Google.
My feeling here is that if you MUST use the Google sitemap
to get your site indexed then you have some serious
architectural issues to solve.
In other words, just because your pages get indexed
via the sitemap doesn't mean they will rank. In
fact I'd bet you that they won't rank because of those
technical issues I mentioned above.
Here I'd recommend getting a free tool like Xenu and
spider your site yourself. If Xenu has problems
then you can almost be assured of Googlebot crawling
problems. The nice thing with Xenu is that it
can help you find those problems, such as broken links,
so that you can fix them.
Once your site becomes fully crawlable by Xenu I can
almost guarantee you that it will be crawlable and indexable
by the major search engine spiders.
Does clean code make that much of a difference?
Again, the answer is yes. By externalizing any
code you can and cleaning up things like tables you
can greatly improve your site.
First, externalizing JavaScript and CSS helps reduce
code bloat which makes the visible text more important.
Your keyword density goes up which makes the page more
authoritative.
Similarly, minimizing the use of tables also helps reduce
the HTML to text ratio, making the text that much more
important.
Also, as a tip, your visible text should appear as close
to the top of your HTML code as possible. Sometimes
this is difficult, however, as elements like top and
left navigation appear first in the HTML. If this
is the case, consider using CSS to reposition the text
and those elements appropriately.
Do Keywords in the domain name harm or help you?
The short answer is neither. However too many
keywords in a domain can set off flags for review.
In other words blue-widgets.com won't hurt you but discount-and-cheap-blue-and-red-widgets.com
will likely raise flags and trigger a review.
Page naming follows similar rules while
you can use keywords as page names, it doesn't necessarily
help (as I mentioned above) further, long names can
cause reviews which will delay indexing.
How many links should you have on your sitemap?
Google recommends 100 links per page.
While I've seen pages with more links get indexed, it
appears that it takes much longer. In other words,
the first 100 links will get indexed right away, however
it can take a few more months for Google to identify
and follow any links greater than 100.
If your site is larger than 100 pages (as many are today)
consider splitting up your sitemap into multiple pages
which interlink with each other, or create a directory
structure within your sitemap. This way you can
have multiple sitemaps that are logically organized
and will allow for complete indexing of your site.
Can Googlebot follow links in Flash or JavaScript
While Googlebot can identify links in JavaScript, it
cannot follow those links. Nor can it follow links
in Flash.
Therefore I recommend having your links elsewhere on
the page. It is OK to have links in flash or JavaScript
but you need to account for the crawlers not finding
them. Therefore the use of a sitemap can help
get those links found and crawled.
As alternatives I know there are menus which use JavaScript
and CSS to output a very similar looking navigation
system to what you commonly see with JavaScript navigation
yet uses static hyperlinks which crawlers can follow.
Therefore do a little research and you should be able
to find a spiderable alternative to whatever type of
navigation your site currently has.
Overall, while I didn't learn anything earth shattering,
it was good to get validation from the horses
mouth so to speak.
I guess it just goes to show you that there is enough
information out there on the forums and blogs. The question
becomes determine which of that information is valid
and which isn't. But that, I'm afraid, usually
comes with time and experience.
About
the author:
Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing
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