Is a dynamic online user list bad for SEO?
-
Hello everyone,
I have a question that is currently puzzling me, and I hope you can help me with.
On musicianspage.com (one of our websites), we show a list of online users embedded within the page which, as you may expect, changes all the time according to who's online at that moment. That list appears on every page of the site, so at any time any page on the site has a different content and different link profile (sometimes we have just a few users connected, other times we may have over 50 users connected at the same time).
My question is: is such a "dynamical-embedded" list bad, good or neutral from a SEO stand point? If it is bad, what do you suggest to do? Put it inside a frame? Using AJAX?
Any thoughts and suggestions are very welcome!
Thanks in advance to anyone reading this.
All the best,
Fabrizio
-
Thank you Geoff, that makes sense to me... I will try to pursue what you are suggesting.
Thanks you again!
All the best,
Fab.
-
Hey Fabrizio,
I think this is a very case by case issue. For musicianspage.com, I would probably lean towards make it JS based or removing it primarily because most of the profile pages that I saw are pretty empty and I wouldn't want search engines to find a lot of thin content here.
There could be value in this if all users had a more complete profile AND they participated in a lot forum threads - this could help with content discovery (for the threads) and pass link equity to the threads, helping them bring in traffic. If this is your goal, you would need to do a leader board, not just online users, so that you are getting users who have actually answered questions and these users are most likely to invest in their profiles and fill them out well. As it stands now, if you want to keep the online users, I'd probably make it JS based.
Good luck!
-Geoff
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
-
How important is the user experience for SEO in google's eyes?
So far I've gathered that backlinks are really king, however you can't get good backlinks without well written content that serves a purpose. As well you can't do a great job with that content and not keep a good user experience, since why would anyone want to backlink to content that can be helpful if you squint an eye and suffer a few scrolling cramps. So how would you rank user experience in the everlasting war of SEO for Google? With this in mind, why would using bootstrap resources pose a problem? I've seen it could add issue to pageload times, however seems minifying could easily solve that. I personally enjoy the use of Bootstrap since it's very easy on the eyes and can have real positive effects when a user looks at content on such a framework.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Is this link SEO-Friendly?
Hi Mozzers, Was wondering if someone could tell me if this link is SEO-friendly? class = "sl">name="sc" type="checkbox" value="1449"><a <span="">href</a> <a <span="">="</a>http://www.example.com/" onclick = "Javascript: return dosc(2);">src="imsd/coff.gif" id="cbsc2"/>Keyword It has some Javascript that makes the link work like a filter. Cheers, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
International SEO and server hosting
I'd appreciate feedback on a situation. We're going through a major overhaul in how we globally manage our websites. Regional servers were part of our original plan (one in Chicago, UK, and APAC) but we've identified a number of issues with this approach. Although it's considered a best practice among many, the challenges we'd face doing it are considerable (added complexity, added steps and delays to updating sites, among others). So, we shifted our plan and how are looking at hosting here in the US but to use Akami to deliver images and other heavier data pieces from their local servers (in the UK, etc.). This is how many of the larger companies like Amazon, etc. delivery their global websites. We hope that using Akami will allow us to have good performance while simplifying our process. Any warning signs we should be aware of? Anyone doing it this way and has a good experience/bad experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh-riley0 -
List of Best SEO forums
Could I please get some input on a list of the best SEO forums out there besides SEOmoz? (Both mainstream and non mainstream)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luia0 -
Indirect SEO boost from links
I have 2 ecommerce sites, each with a blog. I am increasing my linkbuilding efforts, but I don't want to build too many links directly to my 2 sites over a short period of time. I have decided that I will add a certain number of links to sites/pages that are already linking to my main sites (for example, a blog post on my blog, guest post on another blog, article submission, etc.). How much of a benefit can I expect in terms of rankings? Has anyone tested this out or experimented with something like this? What are the pros and cons? I appreciate thoughtful comments.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Could Sub domains damage our SEO?
Hi there, We're currently looking into integrating a new internal search function to our site which will involve housing the search results on a sub domain of our site. We have no intention of these search result pages becoming landing pages for organic traffic but would the inclusion of a sub domain affect the optimization of the main domain? i.e. could it effect our authority? Nige
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0