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
-
Best SEO Strategy
Hi fellow Mozers: I have a question about strategy. I have a client who is a major real estate developer in our region. They build and sell condominiums and also built and manage several major rental apartments. All rental properties have their own websites and there is also a corporate website, which has been around for many years and has decent domain authority (+/- 40). The original intent of the corporate website was to communicate central brand positioning points, attract investors and offer individual profiles of all major properties. My client is interested in developing an organic search strategy which will reach consumers looking to rent apartments. Typical search strings would include the family whose core string would be 'apartments in Baltimore.' (Currently, the client runs PPC for each one of their properties. This is expensive and highly competitive.) In doing research, we've found that there are two local competitors who are able to break on to Page 1 and appear beside the National 'apartment search guides' who dominate the Page 1 SERPS (like apartments.com). The two local competitors have websites of either the same or lower authority than our client's; one has a better link profile, the other is comparable. Here's our problem: our local competitors only build and manage apartments. So, then, the home pages and all the content of their sites ONLY talk about apartment rental related information. Our client's apartment business is actually larger in scope than either local competitor but is only one of their major real estate verticals. So my question is this: if we want to build out a bunch of content which will rank competitively with our local competition, are we better off creating a new area of the corporate site, creating targeted content and resources appropriate for apartment seekers OR would we be better off creating an entirely new site, just devoted to the same? I'm wondering if a new section will ever rank well against competitors whose root domains actually feature content which is only rental related? Likewise, I'm wondering whether we'd be giving up too much, in terms of authority, by creating an entirely new site? I've also only found examples in the industry where an entirely new site was created, so it makes me question the strategy of building out a rental-specific section of a site which also contains information about their condo business. For instance, the Related Companies are a huge builder in the East; they have a corporate site and a site called https//relatedrentals.com . Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
URL structure for SEO
Hi Mozzers, I have a site which is a combination of product pages, and news and advice pages that relate to the products. How would you approach the URL structure for this, following SEO best practice? Approach 1 Product pages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q
www.website.com/product-category/product-page News and advice pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-1
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-2
etc or Approach 2 Product pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-page News and advice pages:
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-1 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-2 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
etc Or would a different approach be better?0 -
Review of our site
Hi Moz-Fans 🙂 I'm doing SEO for about a year now and have a new site to which I do not know where to improve any further. The main keyword is "Webdesign Freiburg" and the site is werkzeug - kasten . com Anyone want to have a look into and tell me what might bring us from page 2 to page 1 on google? Thanks a lot Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
We are looking for an SEO Company to hire to assist in upgrading a site to Wordpress
Does anyone have a good recommendation or better yet personal experience with one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCMotors20 -
Sitemap for SmartPhone site
Hello I have a smartphone site (e.g.m.abc.com). To my understanding we do not need a mobile sitemap as its not a traditional mobile site. Shall I add those mobile site links in my regular www XML sitemap or not bother to add the links as we already have rel = canonical (on m.abc.com ) and rel= alternate in place (on www site) to respective pages. Please suggests a solution. I really look forward to an answer as I haven't found the "official" answer to this question anywhere.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdobeVAS0 -
E-Commerce SEO
Dear SeoMoz fans, I'm really glad to be a part of the community. Just have a quick question. I run a marketplace similar to eBay where users sell the products. I would like some suggestions on how to effectively proceed with SEO for an ecommerce marketplace of this type. Should I be proceed developing product review or product comparison landing pages and build links towards them as often suggested or should I consider alternative marketing methods? Looking forward to your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | buzzmartseo0