Why Google’s Electricity Bill Affects Your SEO

What’s that? Electricity usage can affect SEO? Have you gone mad John? My question to you – have you only just noticed I’m mad?

Right, before I jump into this crazy post, I want to update you about the Podcast. It will resume, so don’t worry. I am due to be interviewing someone very soon, so wanted to hold onto waiting for a confirmation date. Really looking forward to conducting my first interview.

I will keep you guys posted via Twitter and email for when the interview is due. If you haven’t subscribed to my email list – please do! You’ll get a free SEO webinar and of course, updates as to what is happening!

So, where were we? Thats right – electricity bills and SEO of course!

To put things into perspective, think about how Google operates. It needs massive amounts of data storage (I dread to think how much), a lot of staff and a lot of resource to allow them to build up the biggest internet index in the world.

So, with that, what operating costs do Google have? Well of course, they have staff (very high grade and high skilled workers), fantastic offices, and plenty of data storage and web crawling to worry about.

Now all of that has to be run somehow, and you guessed it – the majority needs electricity to run (yes I know thats obvious) but I think it’s important to keep in mind how Google can save a lot of money by crawling and indexing the web more efficiently.

How does this affect your SEO?

Glad you asked Well firstly Google, has to determine whether or not your content is worth indexing. Have they found it somewhere else first? Is it too similar to something else? If so, your content may not really get that much attention.

Think about the efficiencies they try to make. Why would they be too bothered about indexing too much of the same content again and again? What value does it give their users?

Now I’m not saying that the same content doesn’t always get indexed. You see it time and time again, but I’m sure there would be a hell of a lot more if they didn’t put measures in place to reduce it.

Duplicate Content is a No No

You hear time and time again about duplicate content penalties, but by and large, it is misconstrued. If your site publishes duplicate content found elsewhere, you haven’t really got an issue. However, you will have a hard time demonstrating to Google that your version should be placed with more importance than the original source(s).

It will take a lot of work to show your page is the one that deserves to be ranked above the others.

Duplicate content on your site however, does cause big issues. The search engines get really confused. Google has improved over time, but still – why give them a problem to solve? Remember, if they can reduce the resource to work out what to do with your site, they will.

I audit a lot of sites, and I’m still surprised at the amount of times I see duplicated content across the site. We’re not just talking some similar paragraphs, we talking duplicate Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and even whole sites!

What does a site with the same title on every page mean to a searcher and a search engine? Not much. That – along with the meta description is there to describe what is on that page. So use it! The search engines really don’t like duplicate titles and descriptions. It plays havoc.

Duplicate sites are another big no no. However, it’s still very common.

Done an Audit of Your Domain Names Recently?

What do I mean by that? Well there is a high chance you may own several domain names – especially if you’re a brand that needs to protect your name. So, you may have the .com, the .co.uk, the .net, etc etc.

What is your true site? Pick one and stick with it. Where do the others go? If they remain on their domain name, and it’s a copy of your site, you’ve got problems.

How about the www version and the non www version? Which one is your main site? Where does the other one go? Does it remain and show a copy of your site? You’ve got problems.

Have you also got www.yousite.com/index.html as well as www.yoursite.com? Are they showing the same content? You’ve got problems.

You expect Google to pay attention too all those versions? They won’t. They’ll struggle with what one they should pay attention to (they’ll choose) and you’ll make it harder for yourself to rank for your terms.

Remember Linking is Important

Getting links to your website is very important to help you rank. But if you have several versions of your site – where do you link to? Where do your natural links point to?

Some people will arrive at one version, think “Wow this is awesome, I must link to this” (well done you) and grab the URL from the address bar. Is that your true site, or one of the copies? If it’s one of the copies, you’re effectively losing that link value – or worst still, helping another version of your site rank above your real version.

Tricky business hey?

OK John, Enough! How do I Fix this Mess?

Well thankfully it’s pretty simple, but can be a painstaking task (especially if you have a big site with lots of versions). You need to get together your inventory. What domain names do you own? Where do they currently land a user? Do they redirect? If so, what type of redirect?

I’m not gonna lie – it will take a lot of manual assessment – but it’s worth it. Trust me.

OK, once you have a list of all your domains (including www and non www versions) and where they currently land, check if any current redirects are a 302 or a 301. If a 302, this is classed as a temporary redirect and therefore does not pass any link value. This needs to be changed to a 301 redirect, which does pass value (although not the whole value).

You need all versions of your site that are duplicated to 301 redirect to the domain you have decided to keep – to ensure you pass as much value as possible.

Any links that you can control, I recommend changing to point to your chosen URL rather than relying on the redirect. This will pass the full value, to allow you to get the most out of that link.

I told you it wasn’t going to be a quick job. However, it’s going to be worth it.

This way, when the search engines visit the many different URLs you have, they will end up at the right place and see your content as unique (if it truly is of course). This saves Google a lot of headaches with crawling and trying to process the wheat from the chaff.

Conclusion

I appreciate you sticking with me till the end on this one. I feel its a great idea to think about how much things could cost Google, in order to try and make your content worthy of being indexed and valued. It gives you a good perspective on things.

Remember – it’s their search engine, and their expense to go out and crawl, index, and rank the internet. They can have what they want in it and by making it easier for them, you’re making it easier for your site to prosper in the search results.

I understand this may have been hard to digest in text form – so what I will do, is create a video to walk through exactly what I mean. So stay tuned for that.

So remember, all this adds up to running costs for Google – they want to make savings as much as any company. Don’t give them an excuse to miss out on your site!

Your Thoughts?

Remember, as always – let me know what you think about this post. Has it stirred up some burning desires? Has it helped you? Has it offended you?

Let me know in the comments below. I wanna know!

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