What are supplemental results?
Supplemental results are the pages that do not show up in SERPs when a user searches for your topics that relate to the content that you publish.
Pages that are in the supplemental index are placed there because they are trusted less. Since they are crawled less frequently and have less resources diverted toward them, it makes sense that Google does not typically rank these pages as high as pages in the regular search index. SEOBook.com
Basically, Why would you publish something that won’t see the light of day (search engine results)?
Here is how to find out your supplemental results:
1. Enter this query in Google:
site://www.sitename.com *** -view
2. Now, remove the end of the query in the search box:
site:www.sitename.com
Here is how to calculate your supplemental ratio:
Divide the number of pages in Result 1 by the number of pages in Result 2.
This is your supplemental ratio.
How again is this important?
If your ratio is higher than your competitors this means that your visibility is diminished.
The size of the supplemental index and the pages included in it change as the web grows and Google changes their crawling priorities. It is a moving target, but one that still gives you a clue to the current relative health of your site.
If none of your pages are supplemental then likely you have good information architecture, and can put up many more profitable pages for your given link equity. If some of your pages are supplemental that might be fine as long as those are pages that duplicate other content and/or are generally of lower importance. If many of your key pages are supplemental you may need to look at improving your internal site architecture and/or marketing your site to improve your link equity.
Comparing the size of your site and your supplemental ratio to similar sites in your industry may give you a good grasp on the upside potential of fixing common information architecture related issues on your site, what sites are wasting significant potential, and how much more competitive your marketplace may get if competitors fix their sites.
How do you rank?
How does your competition rank?
The tough part has now begun, finding out more about yourself and your website and adhering to the strategy you have devised. It doesn’t happen overnight, not only the building of the site, but also the ranking changes that you are seeking. Developing a Strategy for SEO
Do you have any thoughts or opinions? Let others know, here!
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