Confluence and SEO
-
I think this is a difficult question so apologies in advance and any help would be appreciated!
We currently have a large amount of support center content sitting on our main pages which we don’t think is very effective (mainly basic how to guides). We think it is difficult for visitors to understand and the UI is very poor. In order to solve this we’re currently moving this content onto a subdomain using Confluence, a wiki based team collaboration tool (from a company called Atlassian).
What we’re planning on doing is very much like what Atlassian themselves have done on this page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ALLDOC/Atlassian+Documentation
What are the SEO issues / dangers that I need to consider before moving this content? I’m assuming that as this content will still be on the same domain then we can minimise link equity / authority loss by setting up re-directs to the new content. Also, has anyone had any experience of using Confluence and whether individual pages can be optimised for SEO? I notice that there are lots of add-ins that can be used, one of which is an SEO add-on which allows you to customise things like meta description tags.
-
HI Everett,
Thank you again for the response. Do you have information on how to block robots.txt in confluence? I have been trying to find out how to block Moz from crawling them, but would definitely consider blocking more.
Thank you,
-
Hello Nik,
I'd really need to see the site to give an informed opinion on this. If you don't want Google to pay any attention at all to the knowledge centers, you should probably block those in their respective Robots.txt files.
-
I will check on that now, I believe I set it up with full URL, but would be very grateful if that would fix part of my issue.
I am not surprised to hear you say subdomains are not so cut and dry... seems like nothing in SEO is If you have time, I would be very interested in hearing any additional insight you have about this. We have large knowledge center/customer facing subdomains, but we also have most of our content on a hubspot subdomain. Essentially I don't want Google to pay attention to any of our knowledge centers, but would love if our hubspot pages could help our root domain authority. thank you!
-
NikCall,
Subdomains aren't so cut and dry, in my experience. It depends on whether Google thinks they're the same site or different sites.
Have you tried setting up your campaign in Moz to track www.domain.com instead of domain.com?
-
Hello,
I am working to manage large Confluence/ Atlassian subdomains as well and I am curious if you have any best practices to share? I am currently managing it as these subdomains will not effect our root domain with meta data issues, but I do pay attention to critical crawler issues. It is my understand that subdomains do not really help or hurt your root domain unless there are these errors- have you found that to be true?
I am also trying to get roger bot blocked from these subdomains because they are burying me with crawl errors. I can just ignore them, but it is time consuming and masks the errors I really do need to focus on. do you have any insight in this area?
Thank you!
-
Thanks for your reply Everett, that definitely answers the main part of my question,
I'd be interested if anyone has any experience in using the Confluence add-ons for SEO?
-
You mentioned that this content was on your "main" pages. If that is so, I wouldn't redirect those pages to a subdomain since I am assuming they still have other, more user-friendly, content on them? Perhaps some examples would help.
However, I don't see any problem with using Confluence to put your documentation / help content onto a subdomain. I will let someone else speak to the SEO capabilities of various Confluence ad-ons though, as I have no experience there.
Just make sure the content no longer appears on your "main" pages once you move it over to the subdomain. If that was the only content on the page, then yes you should redirect it. If there was other important content on the page, just remove the documentation content and leave the rest.
I hope I have understood your question accurately.
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
-
Is having copy above the fold still beneficial for SEO
Many sites nowadays are approaching a section based approach with copy further down the page. Is it still valid to keep copy above the fold now for SEO. Will it impact on SEO if you have to scroll down the page?
Web Design | | vortexuk0 -
Does an age verification home page hurt SEO?
There's a microbrewery in our area that just launched its first website. It has the "verify your age" homepage (which is not really their homepage, but I don't know what it's called) before you can enter. It looks like this: http://angrychairbrewing.com/ Anyway, does this hurt them at all from a rankings standpoint? Also, assuming bots/spiders/ROGER can crawl sites like this, (which I think they would have to be able to do) how do they get around this verification? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Will changing product from Grouped to Simple on my magento category page affect my SEO?
Hi all, A category page on my site http://www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk/wood-effect.html currently ranks number 3 on Google for the keyword "Wood Effect Tiles" We're currently reorganising some of our product and I would like to know if this is going to affect the SEO and ranking for the above page and keyword. The majority of products on that page are magento grouped products. I would like to change the page so that it displays only the different constituent simple products rather than the grouped products on the category page. My question is, will this have any impact on SEO? I intend on leaving all other data on the category page the same - so the metadata and the description/title etc. Any help/comments would be much appreciated! Ben
Web Design | | piazza0 -
Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom
Web Design | | TomNYC0 -
Switching from HTML Static to WordPress Platform - SEO
Hi All, Hope everyone is doing well. I am currentyl in the process of having a re-design to myu HTML Static Site, I am switching to WordPress. My site is still running now until the new one is prepared. My question is: I do rank pretty well for some of our strong local keywords, we also have a FEW links pointing to inner pages with an extension of .HTML, should I set the the WordPress URL's to reflect .HTML or will the Search Enginesfigure out that http://www.domain/innerpage.html is the same as http://www.domain/innerpage/ or is it NOT the same. Should I switch or not? Thanks for your input Jimmy
Web Design | | jimmy02250 -
Optimizing a Wordpress Blog For SEO
Besides the standard Yoast for SEO plugin tweaks, I'm researching best practices when setting up a wordpress blog. In this instance, the "front end" of the site would be hardcoded static pages designed for an e-commerce site, while there would also be a /blog/ attached to the site - for blog posts, fresh content, etc.
Web Design | | GKLA0 -
Has anyone had luck doing SEO with a wordpress website built with Parallax?
Has anyone worked with Parallax before? Is it possible and worth it to do SEO on a wordpress site that uses Parallax? I have a friend that is asking. Currently when you navigate their site there is only one URL (home page) and one title tag.
Web Design | | webestate0 -
What is Best Platform to Build Website - SEO in mind
Hello... I am going to be creating two new websites shortly that will need to be built with SEO in mind. These will not be e-commerce sites, but instead will be informational with a couple pages of content on each. One will be used to get people to input their contact info and that info will be sent to our call center where we will call them back from. The other site will be heavily used for graphics, but still needs to have room for content (seo purposes)... Can you guys please recommend what platform i should have these sites written on (and please remember I need to do this on whatever is the most SEO-Friendly)... Thanks
Web Design | | Prime850