Practical Ecommerce Web Marketing

…and why you don’t need it anyways (since it is has been “removed”)

[Advanced topic]

As you may have heard, Google decided to drop the displaying of “supplemental index” as they improve their search engine. This was a useful tool to many of us, however, there are workarounds, and key points to remembered so that you can live without it.

Most importantly, you should note that the SERPS have not changed, only the fact that the phrase “supplemental index” is not gone. In short, simply look at your bottom pages, and begin to decipher why they might be there. This is the only guide on the web that covers ALL reported aspects of what causes the supplemental index:

1. Insufficient content
   1. Try to have a few paragraphs (50+ words)
2. Duplicate, irrelevant, or long TITLE tags
   1. Each page should have a unique tag that labels that page. Be sure content in title appears on page.
3. Duplicate, irrelevant, or long META tags
   1. Same as previous. This also includes duplicates of keywords within the single tag.
4. Orphaned pages
   1. Create some internal or get some inbound links
5. Long URL’s
   1. Shorten them, otherwise they look spammy
6. Pages that are TOO bloated with keywords
   1. lower your keyword density

Unverified

1. Duplicate content
   1. Need I say more? Don’t have the same content on multiple pages on your site, or copy entire pages from other sites.
2. Links from bad neighborhoods.

Thee funny thing is, none of these individual pieces are really new for many of us, just good practices that you should be following in the first place.

To get out of the supplemental index, you have a few options to try (besides fixing the aforementioned problems):

1. Submit a Google sitemap
2. Get inbound links to those pages, or links from your homepage. “Get more quality backlinks. This is a key way that our algorithms will view your pages as more valuable to retain in our main index.” Adam – Google rep (from Google webmaster forums).
3. As a last resort, move the pages, using 301 redirects, to new page names—not recommended in mass.
4. You can request that Google remove the pages completely, but re-inclusion for those pages can take 6 months.

”Beware: Once removed from our index, the pages will STAY removed for 6 months and won’t be re-included during that time, so remove carefully
(and only use this tool if absolutely necessary). “ – Adam

I am surprised to see how many sites are stuck in limbo because of common mistakes like these. Supplemental index is history.

I always like to shamelessly promote myself: Veracart, our hosted ecommerce solution, avoids all of these problems by default, assuming you put in sufficient, unique, non-spammy products descriptions. SEO rule #1: Just be natural and inform people well, and stop trying to trick the search engines.