Construction website
-
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site:
1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account.
2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products.
The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up.
The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that?
Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information.
The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view.
Thank you so much for your help.
Antonio
-
If visitors need to be logged in to view the content, then Google won't be able to see it either. If you show Google different content than what users would see, that would be considered cloaking, which could lead to a penalty. So you need to find some kind of balance between having enough content on the page to give it a chance to rank vs incentivizing people to sign up for your service.
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
When I crawl my website I have urls with (#!162738372878) at the end of my urls
When I crawl my website I have urls with (#!162738372878) at the end of my urls. I used screaming frog to look check my website and I seen these. My normal urls are in there too, but each of them have a copy with this strange symbol and number at the end. I used a website builder called homestead to make the website and I seen a bunch of there urls in my crawl as well - http://editor.homestead.com/faq is an example I recently created a new website with their new website builder and transferred it to my old domain. However, I didnt know they didnt offer 301 redirects or canonical tags(learned about those afterwards) and I changed my page names. So they recommended I leave the old website published along with the new website. So if I search my website name on google, sometimes both will show in the results. I just want to sort this all out somehow. My website is www.coastlinetvinstalls.com Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Matt160 -
Google Change of Address for previously penalised website?
Hey guys Would you use the 'change of address' tool (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en) for a site that was previously penalised, pointing it to the new URL? Cheers Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral0 -
Why is our website not generating organic traffic?
Our website is struggling to generate organic traffic over the past few months and we're lost as to why. It's a relatively new site. It's mobile friendly, all products have meta descriptions and product images have alt tags. Content is added regularly. Site speed could be better and alt tags need to be added to images on the blog but other than that we're stumped. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Can I use the old website content on the new website, after deleting it from the server?
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Is Q&A on a website good or bad for SEO?
I am considering adding a Q&A section to my website and I have a few questions for you PROs!: is it a good thing for SEO? Or a potential pitfall for SEO? If it is used often and users post relevant topics related to the website content, will it help the overall DA and websites SERP performance? Are there inherent risks for website security when using a Q&A? Are there any other questions I should be asking? I am using Joomla! 3.0 with Stackideas Easy discuss/easy social. Thanks for any advice! BB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
First Website
Hi Everyone, I have just published my first website and was wondering if anybody would like to help me with some hints and tips. This is my first time branching into SEO and could really do with some help. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. The site address is www.theremovalistsguide.com.au which targets the furniture removal industry in Australia. Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Why does Tripadvisor rank higher than official hotel website?
Why does Trip Advisor rank higher than our official hotel website royallahaina.com for royal lahaina resort? Our other properties rank higher than trip advisor but this one doesnt.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TSpike10