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 is my site not being indexed?
Hi, I have performed a site:www.menshealthanswers.co.uk search on Google and none of the pages are being indexed. I do not have a "noindex" value on my robot tag This is what is in place: Any ideas? Jason
Technical SEO | | Jason_Marsh1230 -
Getting a Vanity (Clean) URL indexed
Hello, I have a vanity (clean looking) URL that 302 redirects to the ugly version. So in other words http://www.site.com/url 302 >>> http://www.site.com/directory/directory/url.aspx What I'm trying to do is get the clean version to show up in search. However, for some reason Google only indexes the ugly version. cache:http://www.site.com/directory/directory/url.aspx is showing the ugly URL as cached and cache:http://www.site.com/url is showing not cached at all. Is there some way to force Google to index the clean version? Fetch as Google for the clean URL only returns a redirect status and canonicalizing the ugly to the clean would seem to send a strange message because of the redirect back to the ugly. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Digi12340 -
Homepage de-indexed, rest of site all there...
This is a random issue that I've been trying to get to the bottom of over the last few months. First I thought it might be that I have a spammy host, so I changed it. My site loads a little faster but the homepage is still totally non-visible. Other pages and posts index no problem.. It's really quite frustrating. http://bit.ly/1hA8DqV Any suggestions welcome. Standard WP, running Wordpress SEO by Joost and a few other basic plugins...
Technical SEO | | duncm0 -
Update index date
If I update the content of a page without changing the initial url and google crawls my new page, will the index date (that appears in the SERP) change to the latest update? In positive case how many change should I do to consider an update? tks
Technical SEO | | fabrico230 -
How do I get google to index the right pages with the right key word?
Hello I notice that even though I have a site map google is indexing the wrong pages under the wrong key words. As a result its not as relevant and is not ranking properly.
Technical SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Two sites
Hi there just joined had nightmere of a time trying to get a website up and running..... now i have 2 .... one marketing person did and one i did the one i did performing better on google but other onre looks more profetional is there a way i can conbine the 2 under one site..... the one that looks better and getting the benifit of the one thats performing better...... Thanks steve......
Technical SEO | | stevetemple0 -
How do I get rid of irrelevant back links pointing to missing pages on my site
Hi all, My site was hacked about a year ago and as a result I now have a ton of back links from irrelevant sites pointing to pages on my site that no longer exist. The followed back links section on the Competitive domain analysis tool shows about 3 pages worth of these horrible links. I have 2 questions: how bad is this for my site's SEO (which isn't good anyway, Page Rank 0) and how do I get rid of them? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Andy WkXz0
Technical SEO | | getzen560 -
Google News not indexing .index.html pages
Hi all, we've been asked by a blog to help them better indexing and ranking on Google News (with the site being already included in Google News with poor results) The blog had a chronicle URL duplication problem with each post existing with 3 different URLs: #1) www.domain.com/post.html (currently in noindex for editorial choices as showing all the comments) #2) www.domain.com/post/index.html (currently indexed showing only top comments) #3) www.domain.com/post/ (very same as #2) We've chosen URL #2 (/index.html) as canonical URL, and included a rel=canonical tag on URL #3 (/) linking to URL #2.
Technical SEO | | H-FARM
Also we've submitted yesterday a Google News sitemap including consistently the list of URLs #2 from the last 48h . The sitemap has been properly "digested" by Google and shows that all URLs have been sent and indexed. However if we use the site:domain.com command on Google News we see something completely different: Google News has indexed actually only some news and more specifically only the URLs #3 type (ending with the trailing slash instead of /index.html). Why ? What's wrong ? a) Does Google News bot have problems indexing URLs ending with .index.html ? While figuring out what's wrong we've found out that http://news.google.it/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=inurl%3Aindex.html gives no results...it seems that Google News index overall does not include any URLs ending with /index.html b) Does Google News bot recognise rel=canonical tag ? c) Is it just a matter of time and then Google News will pick up the right URLs (/index.html) and/or shall we communicate Google News team any changes ? d) Any suggestions ? OR Shall we do the other way around. meaning make URL #3 the canonical one ? While Google News is showing these problems, Google Web search has actually well received the changes, so we don't know what to do. Thanks for your help, Matteo0