Do dropdowns count as unique content?
-
My current site has some extensive unique database content by "widget" type. Currently we display this info into HTML 's, but we are considering utilizing this data in a dropdown field on each respective widget page.
I want to ensure we don't have thin content...Does the content within the <option>tags on a dropdown count towards unique content?</option>
-
As long as the search engines can crawl it, I doubt that one format would cause your content to be considered "more unique" than the other - it either is unique or it isn't, and the content itself is the same either way. Since it seems like the drop-down is a more user-friendly solution, that's what I'd do.
If you're concerned that your content won't be robust enough to rank for a term, I'd consider adding some additional, relevant text that contains the keywords you're targeting rather than trying to tweak the format of the same text - maybe via a blog post? But if you are finding your content to be unique enough now, in the tables, without adding extra text then I don't think switching it to be in a drop-down is going to wreck that.
-
This is good advice for checking to see if it counts at all, but I guess there is no way to definitively know whether date in a table trumps a dropdown without A/B testing.
-
From everything you're saying, it looks like search engines will be able to crawl the content either way (as long as you make sure the dropdowns are using search-engine-friendly code like HTML or CSS and not JavaScript or Ajax # tags).
Once the site launches, you can double-check that the content's being indexed by doing a site: query in Google that contains a large chunk of the text contained in the dropdown.
-
Not yet. We are still designing wireframes.
I am wondering if the data in a combobox like below would count as unique data:
http://miamicoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image_12.png (possible new display)
We currently have our data displayed in HTML <tables>that I don't believe to be as user friendly, but do count as unique content.</tables>
http://www.learn-html-tutorial.com/Images/FormattedTable.gif
(assuming the data is the same in both pics above)
-
I'm having a hard time picturing what you're describing - do you have an example URL I could take a look at?
-
I was thinking the same...Therefore I am considering populating both my dropdown and a data like my current site to ensure unique content is not too thin and I get long tail searches on some of the more unique product listings.
-
If you can view the code when using a "view source" or similar then the code can be crawled. That being said I don't think an option button would be considered content by a search engine so it wouldn't be unique.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Content too buried in source code?
Our team is working on a refresh/redesign and am wondering if there's a quantifiable way of determining how high our meta data, H1 and paragraph should be in the source code. Or even whether I should be concerned with that. Our navigation will likely have dozens of links (we're going to keep it to under 100), and this doesn't even factor in the design elements. I am concerned about the content being buried. Are these the kind of concerns I should be having? Is there a measurable way to avoid it?
Technical SEO | | SSFCU0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, The pro dashboard crawler bot thing that you get here reports the mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.htm as duplicate pages. Is this a problem? If so how do I fix it? Thanks Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
One landing page with lots of content or content hub?
Interested in getting some opinions on if it's better to build one great landing page with tons of content or build a good landing page and build more content (as blog posts?) and interlink them back to the landing/hub page? Thoughts and opinions? Chris
Technical SEO | | sanctuarymg0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hi Everyone, I ran into a problem I didn't know I had (Thanks to the seomoz tool) regarding duplicate content. my site is oxford ms homes.net and when I built the site, the web developer used php to build it. After he was done I saw that the URL's looking like this "/blake_listings.php?page=0" and I wanted them like this "/blakes-listings" He changed them with no problem and he did the same with all 300 pages or so that I have on the site. I just found using the crawl diagnostics tool that I have like 3,000 duplicate content issues. Is there an easy fix to this at all or does he have to go in and 301 Redirect EVERY SINGLE URL? Thanks for any help you can give.
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
WordPress Duplicate Content Issues
Everyone knows that WordPress has some duplicate content issues with tags, archive pages, category pages etc... My question is, how do you handle these issues? Is the smart strategy to use robots meta and add no follow/ no index category pages, archive pages tag pages etc? By doing this are you missing out on the additional internal links to your important pages from you category pages and tag pages? I hope this makes sense. Regards, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0