Is it SEO OK if i cloak internal links and put them in sidebar ?
-
Hi,
I just want to know if i cloak internal link/url and put them in sidebar?
Basically i am looking out to cloak below url which contains parameter
http://example.com/?tag=tag1+tag2
TO
http://example.com/someword/sometagtag
Is it SEO acceptable ?
Thanks, Raj
-
Hi Rajesh
A rewrite is not a redirect. So whether it's a 301 etc is irrelevant.
Rewrites work without redirecting the user elsewhere and simply convert one URL structure to another.
Might be a good idea to talk to a developer about it because rewrites can cause issues with other pages or other rewrite rules if not implemented correctly.
-
Thanks All for your quick response
yaa this is just to make urls google and user friendly. The content for both user and google will be same.
Its basically for my WordPress blog where filtering the results based on multiple tags slug(sorry, i haven't mentioned this earlier)
One more question: Which redirect type is best for this ?? 301, 302 or 307 ???
-
Hi Rajesh
Just to confirm what Jusuf, Cristian & Chris told you...
If you are not trying to cheat google and just making urls more friendly, nothing will happen.
Help your users to navigate more confidently and the users will help you rank better.
Google has no opinion about that, what they (google) will always try to find is cheating about the content.
for example your url is about great outdoor life so you tweak your url from www.yourdomain.com/123454 to www.yourdomain.com/living-in-the-dessert and you show content about living in the dessert. You must try to be honest on this, do not cloack just for SEO or prepare yourself to be punished by the big G
Also as Cristian said... take care of duplicate content!
Hope its useful for your purpose
Cheers
-
Hi Raj
Chris is right. You'll be fine as long as you show the same content to both users and search engines. Presenting different content to users and search engines is what is commonly referred to as cloaking.
What you're referring to here is essentially a rewrite of the URL to make it search friendly. This is a common technique on sites using, for example, Apache's mod rewrite extension (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html).
The only issue is if search engines index both the search friendly and non-search-friendly URLs so I'd recommend placing a rel="canonical" tag on that page referencing the search friendly URL.
-
Hello,
I agree with Chris. Try to make the users happy and it will be ok.
One thing I would add though. I don't know how you plan to cloak the URL (in fact, I don't really know what cloaking means exactly in english), but be sure to avoid duplicate content since my guess is that the content is the same.
All the best,
Cristian
-
Hi Raj,
If you're just trying to make the URL more user friendly but the content is the same it's fine. What Google doesn't like is if you're showing one thing to the users and another to the crawlers (there are some rare exceptions). However you're change would benefit users and Google likes users to be happy!
Hope that helps.
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
-
Can piracy sites linking to you hurt your SEO?
Hello, Our website sells software that we have developed, but there are piracy websites that offer a crack/keygen to our software and are linking to our site. From an SEO perspective, are those sites hurtful to us if their spam score is below 30 and their DA is not 1? We'd like to understand if there is any action we need to take from an SEO point or if our site's SEO is not affected by it. Thank you!
Link Building | | marynau0 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Thoughts on creating a resource/recommend links page in order to attain links?
Hey guys, Just wondering, how does Google view reciprocal link building nowadays? I've heard in the past that it's something that Google isn't particularly keen on. However, more recently, I've also read that - as long as the links are decent (and in moderation) - link exchanging is by no means a bad thing. The reason I ask is that I'm thinking of creating a "resource/recommended links page" for a client of mine. Because of their industry, it's really apparent that attaining links is often only possible if there is the opportunity of a reciprocal link in return. Therefore, I'd need to have a resource/recommend links page of my own. Is this something I should go ahead with to make it much easier to attain links? Or should I try to avoid reciprocal links and attempt to pinpoint one-way linking opportunities - even if they're thin on the ground? Any help much as appreciated as always. Cheers.
Link Building | | Webrevolve0 -
Link building during link removal
We were advised by out outsourced link removal vendor not to build any links while they are removing links pointing to our site. I am worried that our site will lose significant traffic if we dont build any new links while waiting for them to remove links that caused our site to be penalized. What are your thoughts?
Link Building | | WizardOfMoz0 -
SEO advice for Link roundup
I publish a link roundup on my company blog on weekdays.
Link Building | | maribha
Example: http://www.shack.co.in/blog/argolinkroundups/daily-trail-game-jams-future-of-mapping-and-chomsky-on-education/ I do this using a Wordpress plugin created by Project Argo for NPR news websites. Right now, these link roundup pages have a very low authority score. Could you suggest a checklist of things to keep in mind while doing SEO for link roundups? Thanks, Abhiram0 -
SEO in Africa
Hi everyone, I am a new danish SEOMOZ member currently living in Angola, Africa. I have created the site AngolaCarro.com - an online marketplace for cars. The website is in Portuguese, as this is the main language in Angola. I am struggling finding good Angolan/Portuguese sites for solid back links and I would be extremely thankful if anyone could give SEO advice on how/where to build strong links from Portuguese language sites. Will using dropmylink.com to create back links from English language sites to my Portuguese site be a waist of time or will it have a SEO effect? Thanks in advance and have a great Sunday. Ken
Link Building | | AngolaCarro0 -
Most OSE Top Links Are Internal
If I run an OSE report and check the 'top links' tab, I find that 95% of the links are internal pages on the same root domain. Can I deduce from this that my link profile sucks, and is in need of serious improvement? Thanks.
Link Building | | -Al-0 -
Links to International Versions of the same site
Hi, our clients' .com site has a link in the header to the .com.au version of their site and vice versa. In effect this creates a reciprocal link on each page. Should we prevent the robots from crawling this link? I don't think a nofollow will suffice.
Link Building | | steermoz70