SEO for Metasearch sites like KAYAK or Trivago
-
Interested in getting some opinions of best practices for large dynamic sites?
My main question is, should we be focusing on a different "strategy" if we have a similar type site or does the same principles still apply? Second question is would building a blog presence in our community be a better strategy than trying to get our dynamic pages to rank?
If there is a great step by step or white paper resource anyone could recommend, would be greatly appreciated, as our technical team is just diving into SEO.
If anyone cares to take a look, our site is SupremeGolf.com
-
Adding a blog is a good way for you to publish unique, useful content for your visitors, which will help with organic rankings if you don't allow the other pages to be indexed.
However, if you allow the other pages to be indexed and Google determines that the content on those pages is not unique, or doesn't provide added value, then the entire domain could be penalized (i.e. Panda) so in that case a blog wouldn't help much.
-
Thanks for the info.
My thinking is to incorporate a blog into our platform.. That will allow us to create original content around specific keywords/ phrases that we want to rank organically for..
Do you agree with adding in a blog is a good way to increase organic rankings?
-
I would be concerned with even having a site like this these days. I know other large brands get away with it, but it won't be long before Google takes over those niches completely. If it's scaleable and automated, Google will own it.
Best practices for sites like that involve adding value above and beyond the curation of the content from other sources. If you have an audience already then user-generated content could be one way to go. Editorial content that is 100% unique and useful is great too, but difficult to scale on a site like that.
Another best practice would be to limit the amount of pages Google has indexed. Don't ever allow pages with zero listings to be indexed (i.e. a search that returned 0 results).
Good luck.
-
Thanks for responding Everett! I was asking the latter... Our site is identical to KAYAK.com or Trivago.com... We have a "dynamic" site that pulls in other sites deals... Do you know of any good resources regarding best practices for our type of site that I could check out when building out our SEO plan?
Thanks again!
-
Are you asking how to rank better on meta search sites, or how to rank a meta search site on Google? If the latter, you're better off keeping your internal "dynamic" search result pages unindexable by Google.
-
Ryan totally nailed it!
Here is right principles will remain the same. No matter how big or small the size of your website is, you have to avoid duplicate content, include unique title tag, Meta descriptions, robots.txt site maps and more.
When you talk about building a strategy to win the online industry, now this can always be different and also changing on continuous basis depending on the dynamics change within the industry. Try to build a strategy that suites your condition instead of going for industry trends and common factors.
Obviously, building links is a principle which will remain the same but where to build link is very much based on your strategy.
I will second Cyrus webinar as it contains pretty much everything you are asking for!
Hope this helps! -
I see strategy and principles as separate things. To me principles are things like crawler accessibility, lack of errors, mobile accessibility, black and white sorts of issues. Every site should follow those.
Strategy on the other hand can be widely different. You could develop a strategy where you're competing on educational terms and creating content around specific training or aspects of a swing similar to how bodybuilding.com breaks down exercises into video, descriptions etc. The tie-in to your current site in that example would be course pros that are best at teaching certain aspects of the game, or courses that emphasize being able to shoot a draw or fade. That sort of content would really lend itself to blogging and community.
For the basics of SEO, Cyrus had a great webinar a little while back covering the steps involved in researching and developing your strategy into your site here: http://moz.com/webinars/seo-basics-the-fundamental-signals-used-to-rank-our-content-higher Cheers!
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
-
How to carry across/capture linkjuice during an SEO site migration
Hi there - I am planning out an SEO migration but this thought just occured to me: If the links into a site's previous URL went to the non-canonical version of the domain name - e.g. to: https://theguardian.com/uk and not the correct version of that URL, which is: https://www.theguardian.com/uk Then, if I do a redirect simply from the correct canonical version of the domain:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
https://www.theguardian.com/uk - rather than the versions of the domain that are being pointed to by backlinks - e.g. https://theguardian.com/uk - then the migration will not be carrying across all the linkjuice from the previous site. So how would you suggest dealing with this issue?0 -
I have an authority site with 90K visits per month. Now I have to change from non www to www. Will incur in any SEO issues while doing that? Could you please advice me on the best steps to follow to do this? Thank you very much!
Because I want to increase site speed, Siteground (my hosting) suggested I use Cloudflare Plus which needs my site to have www in order to work. I'm also using a cloud hosting. Im a bit scared of doing this, and thus decided to come to the community. I used MOZ for over 6 months now and love the tool. Please help me make the best possible decisions and what steps to follow. It would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_IT0 -
Merging Niche Site
I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Google favoring old site over new site...
Hi, I started a new site for a client: www.berenjifamilylaw.com. His old site: www.bestfamilylawattorney.com was too loaded up with bad links. Here's the weird part: when you Google: "Los Angeles divorce lawyer" you see the old site come up on the 21st page, but Google doesn't even show the new site (even though it is indexed). It's been about 2 weeks now and no change. Has anyone experienced something like this? If so, what did you do (if anything). Also, I did NOT do a 301 redirect from old to new b/c of spammy links. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
SEO Priorities for Ecommerce Sites
Hello All! What is the best way to rank SEO tasks by PRIORITY for Ecommerce sites to improve?? It can be quite overwhelming with all the types of projects/tasks needed to improve organic rankings... How would you rank the most CRITICAL tasks to spend the MOST TIME on to the tasks you spend less on. Appreciate your input in advance 🙂 Thank you! Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Best place to submit an SEO RFP? Anyone interested in 60 hours of SEO work?
I have a small SEO project (~ 60 hours of work) that I would like to get some help with. It is spread out over the span of 4 to 6 months (2 to 3 hours of work a week with the help of 10 - 15 support staff hours per week), and if it goes well there is an opportunity to extend the project through the rest of 2014. Does anyone here want to see the RFP or have any recommendations on where I can submit this request to get the maximum exposure? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0 -
PDF on financial site that duplicates ~50% of site content
I have a financial advisor client who has a downloadable PDF on his site that contains about 9 pages of good info. Problem is much of the content can also be found on individual pages of his site. Is it best to noindex/follow the pdf? It would be great to let the few pages of original content be crawlable, but I'm concerned about the duplicate content aspect. Thanks --
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 540SEO0 -
Ajax website and SEO
Hi all, A client of mine has a website similar to Pintrest. All in Ajax/. So imagine an ajax-grid based animal lover site called domain.com. The domain has three different Categories Cats, Dogs, Mice. When you click on a category, the site doesn't handle the URL and doesn't change the domain So instead of the domain going from domain.com to domain.com/cats, it uses the Ajax script and just shows all the cat pins. and when you click on each pin/post it opens a page such as domain.com/Pin/123/PostTitle It doesn't reference the category. However a page domain.com/cats does exist and you can go there directly. Is this an SEO issue for not grouping all pins under a category? How does Google handle Ajax these days, it use to be real bad but if Pintrest is going so well i'm assuming times have changed? Any other things to be wary of for a grid based/ajax site? I am happy to pay for an hour or two for a more in depth audit/tips if you can feed back on the above. Fairly urgent. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero1