Client Portal and SEO Considerations?
-
Hi Moz and Moz fans,
We are looking to add a client portal to the website. Basically, I haven't found too much on this with regard to SEO. The idea would be that certain parts of the website would be hidden under a pay wall and for subscribers, they would be able to see all content. I am wondering if anyone has any experience with that and what SEO considerations to take into account.
One thing we are particularly concerned about is how Google will index the portions of the website behind the pay wall, if at all. Obviously, we would rather that they don't index it, so that people can't find a way to get to the info without paying. I would imagine it would have to do with the type of coding, however, I am not a coding guru, so I am not 100% on that.
Anyway, anyone that has any experience in this kind of thing and can comment on this at all, any comment is welcome. Also, any documentation that could be helpful would be welcome too.
Thanks
-
Hi Sergey,
Thanks for this. I have read that article at some point a while back. Interesting read. I was just sort of sounding out a few ideas in my last post. The second option seems to be the best way to go.
Do you know of any other methods to do this that is common in the industry?
Thanks,
Brian -
Hi Brian,
Google can definitely crawl Javascript, although it is limited in a sense. Here is a great article addressing this.
I have seen many websites use the solution that you mention in your second paragraph. That is, creating a separate section of the domain (or creating a subdomain) for users who are logging in. GoogleBot will not be able to crawl anything that is beyond a login portal, so this is the most common solution. Of course you can also disallow the specific path or subdomain in robots.txt as well!
It comes down to how much content that you have behind the login portal. You want to figure out which part of your site you want to be crawled, and which parts you don't want. After that point it's a matter of figuring out the best solution for blocking that content from crawlers.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the reply.
This documentation was helpful. You mentioned the potential for the content to be seen in the cached version of pages. I read the Search Engine Land article there and shes sort of getting at how you don't want to block your content to search engines because then they can't be indexed and ranked. Let's say we don't really care about those parts of the pages that we wan't to block in terms of being indexed, which I sort of mentioned above. If we were to some how display those parts of the pages, images and text, in JavaScript, search engines wouldn't be able to crawl. Would those portions of the page still be visible in the cached version? I would imagine not if the search engines can't crawl JS, but not sure.
A second option I thought of was to create a separate subdomain for logged in users that would only be accessible through a log in form. Search engines cannot follow forms, so I would imagine, that gated content wouldn't be visible to crawlers and therefore not indexed. You could go one step farther and block the subdomain in robots.txt. Do you think that could be a possible solution?
Thanks again for the reply last week.
-Brian
-
Hi Brian,
I have a client working on correcting this issue with his site at the moment. They run a big media site that allows access once paid, but so may of these sites suffer with the same issue and because they allow Google to index the whole text, but only show a portion of it, this means that if you just look at the cached version, you can read it without paying.
In terms of correcting it, I would first have a read on how Google handles subscription sites. You can find that info here. Google prefers the "First click free" model.
There is additional reading on this subject over at Search Engine Land. First Click Free (FCF) is what you want to be looking into in more detail.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
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
-
International SEO | Question about Hreflang
Hi, I have an International SEO question and would like to get some help from Moz forum: Our company has a Taiwan office for a few years already, but never had any Traditional Chinese (lang code: ZH-TW) webpage publihsed on our site: https://www.abc.com. The regional team recently has built a 50 page ZH-TW microsite based on translations from select pages from abc.com. The site will have it's own navigation. Currently our CMS doesn't have a language directory to support ZH-TW (such as https://www.abc.com/zh-tw) If we do not add a directory, the pages would have to be published as ZH nodes (for Simplified CHINESE) with ZH language tags and canonicals. The only tag we can set for ZH-TW would be the Hreflang tag. Example:
Web Design | | ThinkingPanda0 -
Local Versus National SEO - Considerations
I have a customer who is currently a local business but with aspirations of franchising and becoming a national concern, historically I have had quite a lot of success in the Local space, but this will be the first national account so I am looking for any advice on SEO best practice for national businesses. Particularly I am looking at where the business will have a common set of products / services but will have multiple trading addresses / service areas. Any advice would be much appreciated. TIA
Web Design | | Excal1 -
Does blogger.com stink for SEO purposes?
Three different SEO guys suggest moving my blog to another platform. " I think migrating to a more robust CMS platform like Drupal or Wordpress would be a wise decision." But, they never say why moving would benefit SEO. My blog is on a custom domain, has lots of original content and has decent organic traffic to begin with. I think I have other SEO issues to deal with before bothering with a new platform. Does blogger stink for SEO? Why?
Web Design | | Eric_haney0 -
Can anybody recommend a good UK based SEO
Looking for a company or person willing to work on a small company website in other words not expensive 🙂 I looked on the recommended list on the MOZ website but they mostly in America and mostly only too willing to work on large company websites. There wasn't anything catering for a one-man band business like mine which is letting holiday cottages www.endeavourcottage.co.uk. I have just started talks with a responsive web designer, but if I got the right SEO company maybe they could do both but not necessary.
Web Design | | WhitbyHolidayCottages1 -
SSL, SEO, and Site Migration question
When migrating a site to a new url and one where the old url had no https and the new url will be full https does it matter if the 301 redirect points at http://thisisthenewsite.com ? Meaning, should the new site have the ssl / https up prior to redirecting the old site? Does it matter if you redirect the old site to http://thisisthenewsite.com or https://thisisthenewsite.com? Since the site will force to https anyway?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
How to optimize SEO value of links in a calendar
Hi All- I am building a website about outdoor activities (cycling, kayaking, hiking, etc.). The site will most likely be built with either Joomla or Wordpress. A key piece of the site will be a calendar of upcoming events. The calendar will list the basic attributes of each event like date, time and location. However if an event has a webpage of it's own I will also include a link to that page in the details of the event. My question is: How can I create a calendar that will capitalize on the SEO value of the links included in the event descriptions? I've noticed many similar sites put events into a Google calendar and then embed the Google calendar into their webpage. In that situation would Google even see any external links included in the descriptions of the events? Thanks in advance for any input. -Chris
Web Design | | 1968Rouleur0 -
Sitemap created on client's Joomla site but it is not showing up on site reports as existing? (Thumbs Up To Answers)
I am working with a web developer who built our client's site in Joomla. I seem to have a lot of issues with Joomla based sites. Any how, the site is www.pitgearusa.com and when we run site reports it is showing there is no xml sitemap. However he used a popular Joomla plugin for sitemaps called Xmap. Here is their url: http://www.jooxmap.com/ Can anyone provide any advice on what the website developer needs to do in order for the xml sitemap to function and "show up" on reports? Thanks Mashed Up
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Are Carousels Bad for SEO?
My real estate web site was migrated form Drupal to Wordpress last July. The ranking have dropped a lot since migration. One of the things we changed is that we have added two carousels to the home page. Most of the text is below the carousels. Is this bad for SEO? Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan1