Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?
-
To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>, often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name>
We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on dupe content on those unique 300 pages.
My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content?
The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL?
Any best practices we should know about?
-
Hi there,
Not sure I have enough information to weigh in on the first part of your question - Google will index whatever it sees on the page. If you deliver the content to Google, then they index it. The problem comes when you deliver different content to different users. Try a tool like SEO Browser to see how googlebot views your site.
To answer your second question, its often hard to rank near-duplicate pages for specific cities/states without running into massive duplicate content problems. Matt Cutts himself actually addressed this awhile back. He basically stated if you have multiple pages all targeting different locations, it's best to include a few lines of unique content on each page (I recommend the top) to make each unique.
“In addition to address and contact information, 2 or 3 sentences about what is unique to that location and they should be fine,” Source
But this technique would be very hard with only 300 product page. The alternative, stuffing these pages with city/state information for every combination possible, is not advised.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/on-page-optimization-to-rank-for-multiply-cities
So in the end, it's actually not hard to rank for city-state keywords without having it in the URL, but the information should be in the content or other places like the title tag or internal link structure - but to do this for 1000's of locations with only 300 pages without keyword stuffing is near impossible.
The best thing to do is figure out how to create unique content for every page you want to rank for, and take that route.
For example, I might create a "Seattle" page, create unique content for the top of the page, then list 50 or so products with the unique Seattle prices. (This is a rough strategy - you'd have to refine it greatly to work for your situation.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
I see. To get the city-state pages indexed then they must have their own URL. If you can only access it via posting a form (assumed for using the search feature), the a search engine can't see it.
To get round this, you could put a links underneath the search box to popular searches. This will get them indexed.
Does that answer the questions?
Thanks
Iain - Reload
-
Thanks for the reply. The city-state content wouldn't be driven by the URL, it would be driven by the city-state that the user searched for. ie if the person searched for <product><city><state>I would want our /product/ page to show up, and show them content in their local city state.</state></city></product>
-
Hi Editable Text,
In short if you show Google a crawlable link to the content with the dynamic header/content, and the content is driven by the unique URL, yes it will index it.
As with any SEO/life question, there are a few t&c's with this.
- The pages need to be unique enough not to be classed as duplicate content
- Make sure it's intelligently linked internally
- You have external links pointing deep into the site
- You have a decent site architecture
To answer you second question, you'll need unique pages for each location, unless your content would be so thin, you'd need to group them. The URL doesn't have to include the keyword, but it's damn helpful if it does.
Hope that helps
Iain - Reload Media
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 deal with this duplicate content
Hello our websites offers prayer times in the US and UK. The problem is that we have nearby towns where the prayer times are the same and the pages (exp : https://prayer-times.us/prayer-times-lake-michigan-12258-en and https://prayer-times.us/prayer-times-lake-12147-en) are in duplicate . Same issue for this page https://prayer-time.uk/prayer-times-wallsend-411-en How can we solve this problem
On-Page Optimization | | Zakirou0 -
SEO results/title tags/desktop vs. mobile
I am trying to figure out why my title tags comes up different between desktop and mobile search results. Desktop returns my title tag as written, but on mobile I get something completely different. It's related to the site, but not anything I can read, as coded in the site (i.e. not the title tags, meta, or anywhere else). Has anyone else experienced this? My title tag is 64 characters - I know it's a little bit over, but would that cause such a weird issue as a completely different title in the search results?
On-Page Optimization | | tallyhodesign0 -
Ad server not indexed
Hello guys, My client is using an ad server (not sure if i am allowed to tell which one so I will not for now) installed at ads.clientsite.com. It is using noindex, nofollow for preventing Google to index it but also it is blocking like 90 000 other pages on clientsite.com to be indexed/crawled. The guy that applied the noindex tag it is no longer here so I cannot ask him about the logic behind those noindex tags. How big could be the damage to clientsite.com if I will remove the noindex tag from the ad server (ads.clientsite.com? If needed I can PM you the ad server platform we are using, Regards, Ed
On-Page Optimization | | Noriel1 -
Should I change PDF content?
Hi everybody, My Website is ranking well for several keywords and long-tail keywords. However, all these visits are going directly to some .PDF guides that exist on our products and information on industry sectors the company is based around. I feel the PDF's are bad simply because they dont offer easy interaction with the rest of the website. I am considering making each PDF into a webpage but am not 100% sure of the pro's and cons of doing so. I will still need to the PDF's accessible for user to download but don't want my new webpages to get tagged as duplicate content. Is it possible to,
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
1 - change the PDF's so they send any link authority to the new webpage
2 - make google aware that I want the webpage not the PDF to be the "ranking" page What is the likely hood of destroying my rank for these keywords on the PDF by making these changes and then not being able to rank the webpage for the same keywords? It would be pointless if I just lost all the traffic lol.0 -
SEO pluses/minuses of Content used in pop-up windows
I am curious to know what advantages/disadvantages there are to placing content in pop-up windows ( lightbox, etc.). My understanding is that the content can be heavily optimized, but if a user lands on the page where the content is, how will they find it if it is hidden within a pop-up? I guess it is more a of a user experience issue rather than an SEO issue? or not? Hopefully that makes sense. Gary
On-Page Optimization | | Apptixweb0 -
Duplicate content problem
I am having an issue with duplicate content that I can't seem to figure out. I got rid of the www.mydomain.com by modifying the htaccess file but I can't figure out how to fix theproblem of mydomain.com/ and mydomain.com
On-Page Optimization | | ayetti0 -
Multiple silos/products/landing pages. How to design the root page for conversion?
Hi everyone, First post. Tried a few awkward searches on the topic but I must be using bad keywords. I'm re-designing a site that has multiple products and matching multiple audiences. This means we have multiple sillos for multiple groups of keywords with the supporting pages for each silo landing page. Currently I'm working on updating the look and text of those landing pages for each silo to increase conversion. This leaves me with the root web page. We get quite a lot of search traffic from people searching our brand name - so this results in clicks straight through to our root domain. There are no product specific landing pages because it could be any one of the 3-5 different personas we have hitting the site from that source. Does anyone have any good examples of where a site has had multiple products and needed to segregate their audience on a root top page? I'd like to see some examples and hear peoples thoughts. At the moment I'm thinking I need to fill that page up with trust factors as to why people should use us as a company, along with navigational elements in relation to each and every product so they can click through to the proper landing page. The main way I can see on executing that is to have a rotating banner with the same tag line "this is what we do" but be alternating between banners relating to each product.. with their own click through button to go to the respective landing page. Thoughts anyone? Example of sites doing this well?
On-Page Optimization | | specific0 -
Why does SEOmoz use /blog/content-title vs /category/content-title? Any difference?
Assume a brand new blog being designed and all other things equal. What are the pros & cons between using the url structure /blog/content-title vs. /category/content-title? Note:
On-Page Optimization | | JasonJackson
Both scenarios would be using categorical archiving.0