Best way to re-order page elements based on search engine users
-
Both versions of the page has essentially same content, but in different order. One is for users coming from Google (and google bot) and other is for everybody else.
Questions:
- Is it cloaking?
- what will be the best way to re-order elements on the page: totally different style sheets for each version, or calling in different divs in a same style sheet?
- Is there any better way to re-order elements based on search engine?
Let me make it clear again: the content is same for everyone, just in different order for visitors coming from Google and everybody else. Don't ask me the reason behind it (executive orders!!)
-
I think we were confused about how the actual pages differ? Is the visible content Google is getting different, or is it just source code. Without giving away too many details, can you explain how the content/code is different?
-
Both versions meaning, (1) for users coming from Google and (2) coming from everywhere else- yahoo, direct load, e-mail links etc.
-
Agreed - if you're talking about source-code order, it can be considered cloaking AND it's not very effective these days. Google seems to have a general ability to parse the visual elements of your site (at least, site-wide, if not page-by-page). In most cases, just moving around a few code elements has little or no impact. It used to make a difference, but general consensus from people I've talked to is that it hasn't for a couple of years. These days, it can definitely look manipulative.
-
If you're stuck on doing this, I would recommend using a backend programming language like .Net or PHP to detect the Google Bot and generate a completely different page. That being said, it's highly black hat, and I wouldn't recommend doing anything close to it. Google doesn't like being fooled and has stated it penalizes for sites that try to display different content to the bot and users who browse the site normally.
-
I am guessing you are trying to reorder the sequence of HTML or on-page copy / H1 tags or something like that to essentially get the maximum benefit. If that's the case, then it's absolutely not recommended. Anything you are trying to do that only helps your site rank better, unfortunately is a form of cloaking. It's trying to fool the bot.
If however you are trying to help the user, it makes sense, but the way the question sounds, it is unlikely.
Think from a Search Engine's Perspective. Would you like your bot be fooled/manipulated ? The bots get smarter day by day and this form of cloaking is very old and is definitely track-able. Therefore I would suggest you not to do this.
-
What do you mean exactly by "Both versions of the page"?
And what is the outcome you hope to get from this?
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
-
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Blocking Dynamic Search Result Pages From Google
Hi Mozzerds, I have a quick question that probably won't have just one solution. Most of the pages that Moz crawled for duplicate content we're dynamic search result pages on my site. Could this be a simple fix of just blocking these pages from Google altogether? Or would Moz just crawl these pages as critical crawl errors instead of content errors? Ultimately, I contemplated whether or not I wanted to rank for these pages but I don't think it's worth it considering I have multiple product pages that rank well. I think in my case, the best is probably to leave out these search pages since they have more of a negative impact on my site resulting in more content errors than I would like. So would blocking these pages from the Search Engines and Moz be a good idea? Maybe a second opinion would help: what do you think I should do? Is there another way to go about this and would blocking these pages do anything to reduce the number of content errors on my site? I appreciate any feedback! Thanks! Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewstorys0 -
Same language, Different countries. What would be the best way to introduce it?
Hello, We have a .com magento store with the US geo targeting We're going to launch a different versions soon, one for the US, and another one for Canada (we're going to add a Spanish and French versions later as well) The stores content will be same, except currency and contact us page. What would be a better strategy to introduce it to Google? What is better URL structure? example.com/ca/ , example.com/en-ca/ , or ca.example.com/ ? Should we stay with the original www.example.com/ (example.com) and just close an access to /ca/ and /us/ / or use rel=canonical / or use "alternate" hreflang to avoid duplicate content issues? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Meditinc.com0 -
Google cached pages and search terms
Here's something I noticed. We have a rank A page and it's ranking 10 on Google search results. When I hover my mouse over our search result, Google gives us a preview, but Google also highlights in red where the search keyword is present on the page. Reviewing our page, even though we have it as the h1 header and intro paragraph, Google is highlighting it half way down the page. Any ideas why? I review rank 1 - 5 and Google highlights the keyword on the intro paragraph and h1 header Have you guys experienced anything like this? It makes me think..Google could be crawling my site and thinking I haven't got it in the h1 or intro paragraph etc.. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Best way to improve page rank
I notice many small business sites seems to have a page rank of 3,4, or 5 which don't appear to be doing a great deal of SEO on their websites. i.e these are very basic sites with a little static content that rarely changes, no blogs or particular links. Does having a high page rank still mean your will achieve better search engine positions? whats the best way to improve page rank for small business sites? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Search Engine Pingler
Hello everyone, it's me again 😉 I've just got a Pro membership on SeoMoz and I am full of questions. A few days ago I found very interesting tool called: Search Engine Pingler And description of it was like this: Your website or your page was published a long time, but you can not find it on google. Because google has not index your site. Tool Search engine pingler will assist for you. It will ping the URL of your Page up more than 80 servers of google and other search engines. Inform to the search engine come to index your site. So my question is that tool really helps to increase the indexation of the link by search engine like Google, if not, please explain what is a real purpose of it. Thank you to future guru who can give a right answer 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smokin_ace0 -
Different pages ranking for search terms, often irrelevant.
Website: www.templatemonster.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | templatemonster
Problem: Positions dropped while pages which were ranking previously disappeared from top 100 and now different - often completely irrelevant - pages are ranking. Examples:
Search term: Joomla Templates
Previous Position: 8
Current Position: 35
Previously Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/joomla-templates.php
Currently Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php Similar situation with the following search terms: virtuemart templates, virtuemart themes, prestashop templates, prestashop themes, magento themes, zencart templates, zencart themes, zen cart templates, zen cart themes When: according to the Google Analytics (drop in visitors stats) this happened on July, 2nd Preconditions: we had 45 minutes downtime on July 2-nd - but could this 45 mins have had such disastrous results?
No redirects or canonical URL were used which could lead to such change of ranking page.
No changes in the site's informational structure and design.
In webmaster tools (inbound links report) we saw a website yesterday which had over 800,000 links pointing to our domain - http://moviebestwatch.com/ - and today this site is NOT found in Webmaster Tools report! Also, site is down, domain is quite new (how could it have possibly developed 800,000 pages in such a short time?) and whois is privacy protected. Is this some dirty trick from competitors - could it have possibly influenced our positions? Still, what I completely fail to understand - how could a page like http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php be the top ranking page for 'Joomla templates' if there is: not a single mention of the word 'Joomla' on the page (or source code), i.e. the page is completely irrelevant to the search term not a single link with 'Joomla templates' anchor text pointing to that page, neither external nor internal PS. No similar changes in other search engines noticed. Also, the pages in question have been re-spidered July 4th and cache shows the right pages, i.e. it is not that Googlebot has seen logotypes page instead of Joomla templates page. I checked any possible reason I could think of (see "Preconditions") but still have no clue - what is going on?1 -
Best practice to redirects based on visitors' detected language
One of our websites has two languages, English and Italian. The English pages are available at the root level:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Damiano
www.site.com/ English homepage www.site.com/page1
www.site.com/page2 The Italian pages are available under the /it/ level:
www.site.com/it Italian homepage www.site.com/it/pagina1
www.site.com/it/pagina2 When an Italian visitor first visits www.mysit.com we'd like to redirect it to www.site.com/it but we don't know if that would impact search engine spiders (eg GoogleBot) in any way... It would be better to do a Javascript redirect? Or an http 3xx redirect? If so, which of the 3xx redirect should we use? Thank you0