Multiple Domains

Q. My competitors are spamming the engines with multiple sites for the same company. [Can I have them killed? ;-) ] What can I do about this?

Jill: You can try reporting them to the search engines either via their spam report email address, or through the "dissatisfied with these results" link that most engines have on their results pages. If you decide to do this (and I generally don't bother) be sure not to complain that "it's not fair," and that your site is better or that you're losing money, etc. Simply mention that the search results for the particular search query you tried is bringing up multiple domains for essentially the same product, service or company, and that you thought that the engine might want to know about this.

The results may or may not change over time, but at least you can feel good that you tried to help them to improve the quality of their results. They really do want that info, but it's unclear as to whether they will agree with you and also act upon your report.

(For the record, I don't recommend having the competitor killed!)

Files in the Root

Q. I read an article from 1997 that said all my files should be in the "root" directory on my server so that they are not buried deep within the site. Is this still true?

Jill: It actually was never true, although I may have been one of those spreading that myth back then! This is one of those things that many people confuse because it's sort of half true.

It doesn't actually matter where a page physically resides on your server, but it does matter how difficult it is for a search engine to find it. So when we talk about not "burying" pages on your site, we don't mean that you shouldn't have it 10 directories/folders deep on the server; we simply mean that it shouldn't be 10 clicks away from the home page. The fewer clicks it takes to get to any given page, the more important a search engine (and your user) will deem it to be. And of course, the more important they deem it to be, the more apt they are to find and index it.

Blogs and Rankings

Q. This parrot that I talk to in the pet store told me that I should create a blog for search engine optimization purposes. Can you speak to this?

Jill: Blogs have no special powers of high rankings. What they do have (if done correctly) is fresh, unique content. Search engines do tend to like that, regardless of the format. If they know any given site is adding new articles on a frequent basis, they will come around often to index it. Blogs are certainly one way of easily adding new information to your site. Newsletters archived on your site can provide a similar benefit, as can archived press releases, or a popular forum.

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