Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

Google Webmaster Help Group is an excellent resource

If you spend any time at the Google Webmaster Help Group you know that there are some great people there offering great advice for webmasters who need help. It is a good resource for webmasters who are looking for answers to problems they are having with indexing and ranking, webmaster tools, sitemaps, and even offers a place that allows users to make suggestions. One of the problems with Webmaster Help is that there tends to be a lot of questions that come up all the time. The regular members there are happy to answer these questions but they sometimes knock more unique questions off of the front page, which means that they do not get answered. So with this post I would like to provide some answers to the most frequently asked questions. That way those who have common questions can get them answered right away and the members can spend some more time answering the more unique questions that require more time and effort.

Answers to the most common questions at the Webmaster Help Group.

• Can I get a Googler to look at the issues I am having with my site?
  • Probably not. While there are reps from Google somewhat active in the groups you will very rarely get a direct response from one in regards to specific issues with your site. Now there are exceptions and you may actually get some feedback most of the help you are going to get will be from the regulars in the group. This is not a bad thing as most of the regulars who offer advice are very knowledgeable and can identify and offer suggestions for most problems. As always be careful because there are always a few people who offer bad advice but in most cases this is corrected quickly in the group. So if you do get advice make sure you check back to see if others have advised against what you are told. If there is a strong consensus against the advice you can be pretty sure that you should avoid the actions suggested.
  • Now Googlers will sometimes step in and help out. In most cases they will offer assistance when there is a common or widespread problem and there assistance can help a number of different websites. Many times they will also step in to offer their approval for good advice or their disapproval for bad advice. Of course if you yell long enough and hard enough you may get a response from a Googler but this is not a good idea because it will draw the ire of everyone else who is trying to get help.
• I have submitted my site to Google but it is not in the index.
  • Submitting to search engines is a waste of time. Half the time the submissions tools are broken and even if they are working they really do not do much to get your site indexed. Google and all of the other crawler based engines want to find web site naturally, through links. The best way to get found and indexed is to get links from other sites. There are many ways to do this but you have to make sure that the sites are indexed and they should be relevant to your site. You can get links from quality directories (the best would be dedicated to your niche or at least well categorized with a relevant category), sending out press releases, etc. Just get a few quality links from indexed sites and you will eventually get crawled and as long as you have good content Google will index your site. And if you come across an SEO that mentions submission to search engines especially multiple submissions run the other way.

  

• When I check the link:domain it shows a few or none of my links
  • The link: operator in Google does not show all or even most of the real backlinks to your site. It only shows a small sample or sometimes nothing at all. To get a more accurate report on the links pointing to your site you need to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site. Yahoo Site Explorer also provides some good link data. Be aware that the Webmaster Tools link function still does not necessarily provide all of your links. It also does not show only the links that are passing Page Rank to your site. You can get a good idea about how many backlinks Google knows about but it won’t be complete and it will not tell you if a link is actually passing any value.
  • But when I check link: domain I get a lot of sites? As this is usually asked with the original link questions I wanted to answer this too. When you check link: domain.com with a space between the : and the domain name you are no longer conducting a valid link operator search. This search is simply looking for sites that have your URL somewhere on the page along with the term link. Running a search on link: domain is the same as running a search on the keywords link domain.
• http://mysite.com is not in the index but when I check www.mysite.com it is. Why do they show different results?
  • You have canonical domain issues. What that means is that Google sees vwww.mysite.com and http://mysite.com as two different sites. In most cases it filters one version out and uses the version with the most link juice. This is not a penalty but it can still lead to poor rankings. You need to set up a 301 redirect to the version that you want in the index. If one version is outperforming another you obviously want to redirect the poor performing version to the indexed version. If your home page has any other versions like index, home, etc you will want to make sure they are redirected with a 301 as well. It is also a good idea to set up the version you chose as the preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools. If you can you should also try to have the links pointing to the redirected version changed to point to your chosen version. For more information on 301 redirect visit Jaan’s 301 redirect resource page.
• Some questionable sites have linked to my site. Will this hurt my ranking?
  • If it is Google you are worried about don’t. You can’t control who links to you and you can’t be hurt by a random link or two from questionable sites. At worst those links will do nothing to help you. Now, if you are linking back to them or Google notices that it is part of an obvious link network that you are involved in your could face some problems. If you have some links from weird sites and are not involved in any shenanigans you will be fine.
• Bonus: W3C Validation is great and you should strive for it but most of the time has no impact on Google rankings.
  • Look, I believe that having a valid site is an excellent goal. It is easier to crawl and it will render correctly in all browsers including mobile applications. Go ahead and look at the top sites on any number of keywords in Google. I am willing to bet that there are a lot of them that do not pass W3C validation. Matt Cutts has come right out and stated that validation is in no way a part of the algorithm used to rank pages, (starts at 2:40). So, go ahead and work on your site so it is valid because it is better for your site and users but if you are having problems in the SERP you should figure out why that is and put validation on hold. Because unless you have a crippling error (which is very rare) invalid markup is not the reason for your sites ranking problems.

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