I have a site (with a directory) that has been largely indexed into google's supplemental index. Was wondering if there was anyway to get out. I have tried adding content to pages in the form of rotating pictures and text to the footer of directory pages. And have renamed the folder containing the directory, and redirected (permanently) all old URLs to the new location. Will google index the directory at the new locations? Will submitting a sitemap help? If google does index the directory at the new location, how can a directory avod the supplemental index? Hope to hear from anyone who has escaped from the supplemental index.
Do you have unique titles, meta tags and h1 tags on all the pages? Do you link to external sites from the footer or sidebar?
Unique titles, meta tags and h1 tags = yes external links in footer= yes and no (different sites) - doesn't seem to make a difference
Get some more original content on those pages. A lot of the time, it's due to either not very much content on the page or scraped content.
Yes, but that's the point it is a directory. Pages are unique, comprising of directory links and description. I have also put the rotating script in to add to the unique content and to 'refresh pages regularly'. Not too much room to be adding more content to a directory. Plus i have done the aforementioned things on other supplemental listings (non directory) and none of them have been sucessfull in getting sites out of the s.index.
You have the answer...you need to think creative on this. I'm not sure the directory, but the "point" is you need more content. That's it. Google doesn't say: "Hey, it's a directory, so let's get this site outta supplemental results". Not how things are done. PS - rotating content (and content actually means content, not pics) will not help. Keep things static.
I would remove any external links from the footer or sidebar. And be careful what sites you are listing in the directory. Check for any broken links or banned sites.
Hmmm, that got me thinking. I have a site that is mostly in supplemental. It doesn't have footer links etc, but the whole menu is last in the HTML code (although not shown last on the visible page, because CSS puts it up the top). I wonder if google think it's a whole bunch of footer links?
If the links are internal then there is no problem. Its external links outside the content area that Google doesn't like.
What are you talking about? Explain? It's known that external links are a GOOD idea to get better rankings in G especially.
Google likes to see natural links. Links in navigation bars, footers and any other places where there is a low content to links ratio is classed as unnatural. A natural link is usually in the middle or end of a blog post or article to reference something.