Matt Cutts from Google is here to discuss whether a site’s downtime can affect its ranking. The short answer is yes. Though as usual, Matt is not prepared to give us any specifics.

If your site is down for a few hours, and Google’s bots try to crawl it during that time, it’s not going to create any problems. If you need to take everything offline for maintenance for several hours, your status at Google shouldn’t change. If it happens a few times, your content may not be as fresh in the Google database as it could be, but as long as you’re back online the next time the bots drop by, there will be no harm done.

The problems crop up if your site is down repeatedly when Googlebot arrives. If Google has too many unfulfilled visits to your site in a row, the chances of your site being temporarily removed from their database are pretty good. (Not to mention all the other problems unreliable servers can cause – lost traffic, lost sales, missing emails, and lost links.) How many is too many? No one outside of Google could answer that. But if your site is chronically unavailable, you probably have bigger problems than wondering what Google is thinking.

Accidentally preventing search engines from crawling and indexing your website’s pages is not going to help your presence in the organic search results. If it seems like the engines aren’t indexing your content, it could be one or more of the following.

1. The content requires a login or registration

If visitors can’t get to areas of your website without logging in or creating an account, neither can the search engine bots.

2. No Text

If your page is almost entirely images, graphics, and videos – there is no text for the search engines to use in determining what a page is about. You can help this along by using alt text for your images and using descriptive file names (like “eiffel-tower-sunset-paris.jpg”). If you want the page to come up in search results, some text should be on it.

3. Different versions of pages being served at the same URL

If you’re serving different pages to different users arriving at the same URL, based on their location or some other variable, the search engine bot is only going to crawl and index one version.

4. Incorrectly configured redirects

Have you moved some of your content, or moved your entire site to a new domain, and implemented redirects? If it’s been a while, and the search engines don’t appear to be indexing the new pages, these might be the culprit. Ensure that they are 301 redirects (not 302s) and ensure that they are set up properly for every page involved.

5. The content is Flash or Silverlight

While search engines can now actually crawl and index some Flash, it’s still risky. If you really want this content crawled, it might not be the best way to present it.

6. They can’t get to the content because of Ajax or JavaScript

Search engines only have trouble with javascript when it is poorly implemented. If your site is using a lot of it and you’re having indexing problems, it may not be as accessible as it could be.

I’ve heard so many questions over the years from people who want precise numbers and exact measurements for all the elements of SEO. Like…

Exactly how many incoming links do I need to get on the front page? In the top 3? To be #1?
Exactly how many keywords can I focus on? Exactly how many times should my keywords appear on every page?
What is the perfect keyword density ratio? Am I spamming? Am I stuffing? I’m worried I might be stuffing!?!
Exactly how many backlinks do I need with each keyword as anchor text to get into the top 3?
Exactly how many backlinks do I need from a PR4 site to get into the top 3? What about PR5?
Exactly how many pages do I need? What is the absolute perfect site size?
Precisely how fast should my site load? What is the optimal number of seconds?
Exactly how many characters should be in my title tags? Exactly how many keywords should I use in my title tags?

Honestly, if you stopped spending your time looking for answers to these genuinely inconsequential (bordering on ridiculous) questions and started spending it on improving the quality of your backlinks and the content of your website, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

If your entire website consists of 4 pages, hasn’t been updated since launch, and contains about ½ tsp of useful content, I’m certainly not surprised that it’s not ranking well. Are you? Search your most coveted keyword and look at the sites in the top 10. What are they doing that you’re not? Don’t look at their outgoing vs incoming link ratio, their keyword density, or their site load speed. Don’t spend an afternoon compiling a list of numbers. Yes, these elements ARE part of the algorithms search engines use to rank sites, but they are minute parts. What matters is content and links. Chances are, your competitors have a higher quality of both.

Don’t be duped into thinking SEO is a scientific or mathematical equation you can solve. There’s no right number. The answer is unique, useful content and high quality, relevant links.

Matt Cutts from Google is back with a new video post about Google’s site: query.

The site: query can be used by anyone to determine how many of a given site’s pages have been crawled and indexed by Google. Simply type “site:domain.com” (minus the quotes) into the Google search field. It will return a list of all of the pages Google has indexed from the domain. Though, as Matt points out in this clip, it’s not as accurate as you might hope.

Matt says – “Site colon queries attempt to estimate how many pages are in our index”. You wouldn’t think that a database would need to “estimate”, but apparently this one does. Matt goes on to tell us that a site: query will only ever return “three significant digits of precision” and will always include “About”. So, that could be About 691, or About 179,000,000, and they’re not going to make any claims about the accuracy of either one.

This isn’t fantastically useful information from an SEO perspective, but it does indicate that Google’s ability to handle million page sites in their database isn’t as flawless as you might have imagined.

Can you do SEO yourself?

Yes, you absolutely can. But do you want to?

Suppose you wanted to install some new cabinets in your kitchen. Could you do this yourself? Certainly. You can do anything you set your mind to. But do you have any experience or any of the skills needed to do such a thing? If not, you could take a class. Buy a DVD series and some books. Even hire someone to teach you. With time, effort and practice you could become anywhere from proficient to brilliant in all aspects of cabinet installation. But is that what you want? Or do you just want new cabinets?

Ask yourself this:

Would you rather spend time or money?

There are search engine optimization and internet marketing services out there for every budget. A small business, sole proprietorship, or hobby site doesn’t have the same needs and demands of a Fortune 500 company. SEO companies are well aware of this and charge accordingly. Hiring an SEO is probably more affordable than you think.

If you don’t want to spend any money at all, or there is simply nothing in the budget for it, then learning to do your own SEO is the road you’ll need to take.

How much do you already know?

Let’s go back to the cabinets for a minute. What level of skill would you be starting this project with? Do you know your way around a wood shop, or have you never held a hammer before? Success is possible from both starting points, but with the latter scenario, it could be years before you get those cabinets in. Do you want to wait? Can you afford to wait?

Do you update your own website? Could you update your own website? If yes, you’re in good shape to start learning and implementing some SEO basics. If no, you’ll need to start there. Learning basic SEO practices and principles will be impossible without some web site structure fundamentals to build upon. To grasp SEO concepts, you’ll need to get to a basic level of knowledge about how websites work and how search engines work to build upon. You’ll also need to know how to implement changes to your site, or be able to instruct a designer to implement them for you. Once again, you need to ask yourself if you’re interested or patient enough to put in the time.

Spending the time on learning SEO to save money could be taking the time away from helping your business make money. If your passion isn’t SEO related, the choice seems clear.

Hiring an SEO consultant to do part of the work is also an option.

Many search engine marketing companies offer SEO consulting, SEO audits, or DIY SEO (Do It Yourself). This is less costly than full plate SEO services, though it will of course require an investment of your time. Services will vary, but most of these offerings will generally involve the auditor investigating and researching your website, from both a technical and content perspective, and then providing you with a list of recommendations designed to improve its organic search engine rankings. An SEO audit will point out any existing or potential problems that may be hampering the site’s progress in the search engines as well as outlining methods to improve most aspects of the web site. Some consultants may also investigate and list potential backlink opportunities. It will be your responsibility to implement all these recommendations. This can be a good compromise if you’re confident in your abilities, or have someone who can make the changes for you.

So you’ve decided you’re going to learn how to do your own SEO.

Where do you start? You can begin immediately by simply running some searches and getting down to reading. Or you could sign up for a course or buy some books.

Probably the biggest potential pitfall for doing your own on-site SEO is following bad advice. There is a LOT of misinformation out there. You’d think that paying for an SEO course would guarantee quality information, but unfortunately that’s not the case. There’s no certification system for SEOs, and there’s no one monitoring its instruction either. Buying a book from a known publisher would probably be “safer” than buying an ebook from a random website, but SEO information goes stale quickly. Search engines are always changing, and in the time it takes to write, edit and publish a book, some of that information will become out of date.

Most of this bad SEO advice is not harmful enough to get your site in trouble (penalties, bans, etc) but plenty of it is incorrect or just not helpful. Meaning, you could spend a lot of time implementing changes that don’t do a thing to improve your organic results, or worse, actually cause your existing search engine results to sink. Time and experience will teach you what matters and what works when it comes to search engine optimization, and hiring an SEO gives you the benefits of years of hands-on experience and learning now. Which brings us back to the original question – would you rather spend time or money?