Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Log in, sign up, user registration and robots
-
Hi all,
We have an accommodation site that asks users only to register when they want to book a room, in the last step. Though this is the ideal situation when you have tons of users, nowadays we are having around 1500 - 2000 per day and making tests we found out that if we ask for a registration (simple, 1 click FB) we mail them all and through a good customer service we are increasing our sales.
That is why, we would like to ask users to register right after the home page ie Home/accommodation or and all the rest. I am not sure how can I make to make that content still visible to robots.
Will the authentication process block google crawling it? Maybe something we can do?We are not completely sure how to proceed so any tip would be appreciated.
Thank you all for answering.
-
For implementing early user registration without hindering SEO, consider using dynamic rendering to serve content to Google’s crawlers; this method can maintain visibility while capturing user details upfront. For more tailored strategies, consult with experts at First Growth Agency.
-
The registration process on most websites is pretty straightforward. You enter your email, you create a password, and then you are done with it. Also try instagram mod apk unlimited likes and followers.
-
-
-
Yes it is better to ask the users to register right after the homepage but it will take some time that is the main reason you should apply some different tactics.
-
Just to give you un update, our IT solved that with CSS. The code is visible but it appears a CSS login over that does not really allow you to see much more until you log in.
It is working.
-
Correct. If you have a wall Googlebot won't index it unless you make some sort of exception for it (and even then Google frowns on walled off content). SEM had great article on this talking about Google's rules for walled news content (may not apply to you but interesting nonetheless).
I would put your wall behind your content, not in front.
-
Thank you Highland for the answer.
Therefore, I understand that there is not any way for robots to pass where there autentification requirements. Right? Just to confirm. This is our main concern, we get 30% of our SEO results directly to rooms and we would not like to loose those.
We already made the A/B tests and check the conversion rates and though we know we are loosing some users and making bounce higher the sales rates are much higher (about 30%).
We are working to solve this as well improving the product and the site but that would be other completely different thing.Seems like making a decission where to ask to register is the real important thing then
-
You can go this route easily enough, it just requires a deliberate decision as to which is public and which is behind your login-wall. Put a different way, you're going to need some public pages that explain your site, how the process works, etc. Once you've established what is necessary from a user and SEO perspective, then you can wall off your content behind a login.
You also need to experiment some with your funnel. If you present your wall on the first page after the home page, is that going to drive conversions (registrations in this case) up or down? Maybe your users are reading 3-4 pages before registering. Where is the sweet spot? A-B test. Funnel test. Be careful that you don't go "Hey, registrations increased sales so we need everyone to register!" because you might hurt sales down the road if less people register.
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
-
Will properly encoded & signs hurt or help me?
Hello friends, Will properly encoding a url hurt my ranking after having it improperly coded? I want to change my & symbols to & If I go from:
Technical SEO | | sonic22
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool To:
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=cool Will I get hurt if I make the leap?0 -
Does user engagement or content of pages requiring login help SEO?
Hi! Our company is trying to come up with a few pages with some manuals to teach our users how to use our products. However, these pages require username and password. My understanding is that user engagement will help a website's keyword rankings and Google will not be able to crawl or have access to pages requiring login as it doesn't have username and password. Based on that idea, does that mean all the content and user engagement on those pages requiring login won't help our overall SEO? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | EverettChen0 -
Google indexing despite robots.txt block
Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt
Hi, I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code: User-agent: * Disallow: / We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark
Technical SEO | | Mark_Ginsberg0 -
SEO for User Authenticated Content
Hi Everyone - I have a potential client who is seeking SEO for a site that contains about 95% of content only accessible through user authentication . Does anyone have tips for getting this indexed without having to open it up to the public? I was considering adding "snippets" into the robots.txt or creating an additional page with snippets linking to the login page. I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | manutx0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
Subdomain Removal in Robots.txt with Conditional Logic??
I would like to see if there is a way to add conditional logic to the robots.txt file so that when we push from DEV to PRODUCTION and the robots.txt file is pushed, we don't have to remember to NOT push the robots.txt file OR edit it when it goes live. My specific situation is this: I have www.website.com, dev.website.com and new.website.com and somehow google has indexed the DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and I'd like these to be removed from google's index as they are causing duplicate content. Should I: a) add 2 new GWT entries for DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and VERIFY ownership - if I do this, then when the files are pushed to LIVE won't the files contain the VERIFY META CODE for the DEV version even though it's now LIVE? (hope that makes sense) b) write a robots.txt file that specifies "DISALLOW: DEV.website.com/" is that possible? I have only seen examples of DISALLOW with a "/" in the beginning... Hope this makes sense, can really use the help! I'm on a Windows Server 2008 box running ColdFusion websites.
Technical SEO | | ErnieB0