Geo-targeting Content Based On IP address?
-
What are the benefits / disadvantages of geo-targeting content based on IP address. A client is interested in serving up different content on their homepage based on what area the user is coming from. This seems like an SEO nightmare to me as search engine spiders could potentially see different content depending on when they visit. Is there a best practices here? Or is it looked down upon in regards to SEO? Any information would be helpful.
-
Check out this discussion first: http://www.seomoz.org/q/geo-targeting-by-ip-address
There's nothing wrong with dynamic targeting, if it's done right: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-level-demographics <-- That post is about persona-targeting
Be aware that for many sites' geo-targeted content is not on the homepage per se, but a landing page built for that purpose. That doesn't mean it's the only way to go, but that's where you'll find more examples. It's probably best to do some multivariate testing before going all in on it...
If client's doing this to improve user experience, there's nothing wrong with it, but yes it could have unexpected effects on your results in local search.
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
-
Should my website be accessible by IP?
I have been doing some digging in to this today essentially triggered off by looking at the secure certificate on my site and comparing it to others as i have been seeing some security warnings on a random basis. I noticed that on all instances none of the other sites IP addresses re-direct to the website, whereas on my site it does. is re-directing the IP address to the website a big no-no?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WAWKA1 -
About duplicate content
We have to products: - loan for a new car
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC
- load for a second hand car Except for title tag, meta desc and H1, the content is of course very similmar. Are these pages considered as duplicate content? https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-tweedehands-auto.html
https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-nieuwe-auto.html thanks for the advice,0 -
Robots.txt & Duplicate Content
In reviewing my crawl results I have 5666 pages of duplicate content. I believe this is because many of the indexed pages are just different ways to get to the same content. There is one primary culprit. It's a series of URL's related to CatalogSearch - for example; http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?q=Mobile I have 10074 of those links indexed according to my MOZ crawl. Of those 5349 are tagged as duplicate content. Another 4725 are not. Here are some additional sample links: http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?dir=desc&order=relevance&p=2&q=Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Careerbags
http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?color=28&q=bellemonde
http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?cat=9&color=241&dir=asc&order=relevance&q=baggallini All of these links are just different ways of searching through our product catalog. My question is should we disallow - catalogsearch via the robots file? Are these links doing more harm than good?0 -
Switching the IP?
I am currently in the process of migrating a site, the domain will stay the same, it will go from example.com to example.com. The only thing that is changing is the IP address and the host. The server's will still be in America. I have done research on this question and have gotten varied answers, some saying that the ip change will affect the SEO rankings depending on where country is, and some saying that Google only looks at the URL not the ip address in terms of rankings. Does anyone have an answer so I can be prepared and mitigate as much damage as possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asher0 -
Wordpress and duplicate content
Hi, I have recently installed wordpress and started a blog but now loads of duplicate pages are cropping up for tags and authors and dates etc. How do I do the canonical thing in wordpress? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Differentiating Content
I have a piece of content (that is similar) that legitimately shows up on two different sites. I would like both to link, but it seems as if they are "flip flopping" in ranking. Sometimes one shows up, sometimes another. What's the best way to differentiate a piece of content like this? Does it mean rewriting one entirely? http://www.simplifiedbuilding.com/solutions/ada-handrail/ http://simplifiedsafety.com/solutions/ada-handrail/ I want to the Simplified Building one to be found first if I had a preference.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CPollock0 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
Should I Re-Direct Based Upon IP
I am working on an e-commerce store. There are 4 subdomains for 4 seperate languages. ie uk.business.com, fr.business.com etc The client is asking that any French speaker (French IP address) is only shown the FR subdomain and so on for all languages. Is this the best way of doing things, or am I better off without the re-direct.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eventurerob0