How do we ensure our new dynamic site gets indexed?
-
Just wondering if you can point me in the right direction. We're building a 'dynamically generated' website, so basically, pages don’t technically exist until the visitor types in the URL (or clicks an on page link), the pages are then created on the fly for the visitor.
The major concern I’ve got is that Google won’t be able to index the site, as the pages don't exist until they're 'visited', and to top it off, they're rendered in JSPX, which makes things tricky to ensure the bots can view the content
We’re going to build/submit a sitemap.xml to signpost the site for Googlebot but are there any other options/resources/best practices Mozzers could recommend for ensuring our new dynamic website gets indexed?
-
Hi Ryan,
Mirroring what Alan said, if the links are html text links - and they should be - then you will reduce your crawling problem with Google.
If you must use javascript links, make sure to duplicate them using
<noscript>tags so that Google will follow them.</p> <p><a href="http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355">http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355</a></p> <p>But be careful, Google doesn't treat <noscript> links like regular html links. At best, it's a poor alternative.</p> <p>Google derives so many signals from HTML links (anchor text, page rank, context, etc) that it's almost essential for a search engine friendly site to include them.</p> <p>The Beginners Guide to SEO has a relevant chapter on the basics of Search Engine Friendly Design and Development:</p> <p><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development">http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development</a></p> <p>Best of luck!</p></noscript>
-
Definitely want to get it right before launch. It's not going anywhere until it is absolutely ready!
-
The project this reminds me of took six months to complete and the 301's alone were a full time job.
Get it right the first time... you do not want to restructure like this on a large dynamic site.
I must say the project worked out but I got all my grey hair the day we threw the switch...
-
When I say its costly to rewrite 200,000+ URLS I mean it. Correcting mistakes here can cost big dollars.
In this case it wascostly to the tune of $60,000+ in costs and loss, however the bottle of bubbly at the end of the six month project was tasty.
Point being is to do it right the first time.
As I said before your best bet is documentation. Large dynamic sites generate large dynamic problems very quickly if not watched closely.
-
Thank you Khem, very helpful replies.
-
One more thing, I missed. Internal linking, make sure each of the page is linked with some text link. But avoid over linking. don't try to link all the pages from home page. Generally we links all the categories, pages from footer or site-wide links
-
Okay, lets do it step by step.
First, if it's a product website, create a separate feed for products and submit the sitemap with Google.
if not, that may you would have separate news/articles/videos sections, create separate xml sitemap for each section and submit with Google
If not, make sure to have only search engine friendly URLs, who says rewriting 200,000+ pages is costly, compare this cost with the business you'll loose when all your products would be listed in Google. So, make sure to rewrite all the dynamic URLs, if you feel that Google might face problem in crawling your website's URLs
Second, study webmaster tool's data very carefully for warnings, errors, so that you can figure out the issues which Google might have been facing while visits your websites.
Avoid duplicate entries of products, generally we don't pay attention to these things, and show same products on different pages in different categories. Google will filter all those duplicate pages, and can even penalize your website because of the duplicate content issue.
Third, keep promoting, but avoid grey/black hat techniques, there is no shortcut to the success. you'll have to spend time and money.
-
It's definitely something we're taking a very close look at. Another thing not mentioned is the use of canonical tags to head off duplicate content issues, which I'll be ensuring is implemented.
My next mugshot might have significantly grayer hair after this is all done...
-
Thanks very much for the replies.
I'll ensure proper cross linking from navigation, on pages themselves and submit a full XML sitemap, along with the social media options suggested. My other concern is that the content itself won't be visible to Googlebot due to the site being largely javascript driven, but that's something I'm working with the developers to resolve.
-
As you can tell from the response above indexation is not what you should be worried about.
Dynamic content is not fool proof. The mistakes are costly and you never want to be involved rewriting 200,000+ pages of dynamic rats nest.
Sorting abilities can cause dynamic urls and duplicate content.
Structure changes or practice changes can cause crawl errors. I looked at a report for a client early today that had 3000+ errors today compared to 20 last week. This was all due to a request made by the owner to the developer.
When enough attention is not paid to this stuff it causes real issues.
The best advice I can offer is to make sure you have a best practices document that must be followed by all developers.
-
Make sure every page you would like to be crawled is linked to in any matter. You can create natural links to them, e.g. from your navigation or in text links, or you can put them in a sitemap.
You can also link to these pages from websites like facebook, twitter to have fast crawling.
Tell Google in your robots.txt that it can access your website and make sure non of the pages you would like to be indexed carry the noindex-value in the robots meta-tag.
Good luck!
-
any link, but i should correct what i said, they will be crawled, not necessary indexwed
-
Thanks for the reply Alan, do you mean links from the sitemap?
-
If you have links to the pages they will be indexed, dynamic of static it does not matter
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
-
Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster
Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console. https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.
Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb0 -
New SEO manager needs help! Currently only about 15% of our live sitemap (~4 million url e-commerce site) is actually indexed in Google. What are best practices sitemaps for big sites with a lot of changing content?
In Google Search console 4,218,017 URLs submitted 402,035 URLs indexed what is the best way to troubleshoot? What is best guidance for sitemap indexation of large sites with a lot of changing content? view?usp=sharing
Technical SEO | | Hamish_TM1 -
Moving to old site to new domain sub directory
Hi, we've moved our old site to a new domain but in a subdirectory (the shopping site has been consolidated into overarching company website's shopping section, thus the move to sub dir). Are 301 redirects from old URLs to new domain's subdirectory ex newsite.com/shopping/page-1/ sufficient for site migration? I wasn't able to use Google's site address change tool since we're moving to a subdirectory on the new domain. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Do I submit a sitemap for a highly dynamic site or not? If so, what's the best way to go about doing it?
I do SEO for online boutique marketplace. I've been here for about 4 weeks and no one's done there SEO (they've been around for about 5 years), so there's lots to do. A big concern is whether or not to submit a sitemap, and if I do submit one, what's the best way to go about doing one.
Technical SEO | | Jane.com0 -
Pages Not Getting Indexed
Hey there I have a website with pretty much 3-4 pages. All of them had a canonical pointing to one page and the same content ( which happened by mistake ) I removed the canonical URL and added one pointing to its page. Also, I added the original content that was supposed to be there to begin with. It's been weeks but those pages are not getting indexed on the SERPS while the one that they use to point with the canonical does.
Technical SEO | | AngelosS0 -
New website on new url?
We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page). Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?
Technical SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Why is there a difference in the number of indexed pages shown by GWT and site: search?
Hi Moz Fans, I have noticed that there is a huge difference between the number of indexed pages of my site shown via site: search and the one that shows Webmaster Tools. While searching for my site directly in the browser (site:), there are about 435,000 results coming up. According to GWT there are over 2.000.000 My question is: Why is there such a huge difference and which source is correct? We have launched the site about 3 months ago, there are over 5 million urls within the site and we get lots of organic traffic from the very beginning. Hope you can help! Thanks! Aleksandra
Technical SEO | | aleker0 -
Index forum sites
Hi Moz Team, somehow the last question i raised a few days ago not only wasnt answered up until now, it was also completely deleted and the credit was not "refunded" - obviously there was some data loss involved with your restructuring. Can you check whether you still find the last question and answer it quickly? I need the answer 🙂 Here is one more question: I bought a website that has a huge forum, loads of pages with user generated content. Overall around 500.000 Threads with 9 Million comments. The complete forum is noindex/nofollow when i bought the site, now i am thinking about what is the best way to unleash the potential. The current system is vBulletin 3.6.10. a) Shall i first do an update of vbulletin to version 4 and use the vSEO tool to make the URLs clean, more user and search engine friendly before i switch to index/follow? b) would you recommend to have the forum in the folder structure or on a subdomain? As far as i know subdomain does take lesser strenght from the TLD, however, it is safer because the subdomain is seen as a separate entity from the regular TLD. Having it in he folder makes it easiert to pass strenght from the TLD to the forum, however, it puts my TLD at risk c) Would you release all forum sites at once or section by section? I think section by section looks rather unnatural not only to search engines but also to users, however, i am afraid of blasting more than a millionpages into the index at once. d) Would you index the first page of a threat or all pages of a threat? I fear duplicate content as the different pages of the threat contain different body content but the same Title and possibly the same h1. Looking forward to hear from you soon! Best Fabian
Technical SEO | | fabiank0