How do I optimize pages for content that changes everyday?
-
Hi Guys
I run daily and weekend horoscopes on my site, the daily horoscopes are changing every day for obvious reasons, and the weekend horoscopes change every weekend.
However, I'm stuck in how the pages need to be structured. I also don't know how I should go about creating title tags and meta tags for content that changes daily. Each daily and weekend entry creates a new page.
As you can see here http://bit.ly/1FV6x0y you can see todays horoscope. Since our weekend horoscopes cover Friday Sat and Sunday, there is no daily for Friday, so it shows duplicate pages across Friday, Sat and sunday. If you click on today, tomorrow and weekend all pages showing are duplicate and this will happen for each star sign from Fri, Sat Sun. My question is, will I be penalized doing this? Even if the content changes?
How can I optimize the Title Tags and Meta Tags for pages that are constantly changing?
I'm really stuck on this one and would appreciate some feedback into this tricky beast.
Thanks in advance
-
Hey RedSweater,
Thanks for your in-depth response.
So firstly I wanted to ask with regard to the pop up modals for each star sign are you saying if we use the AJAX instead of the javascript to pull in each additional sign like you were saying would this be a better way to optimize the page for spiders to see, also how we currently have them creates the duplicate content effect?
Another question I might ask is, why are you archiving all the daily horoscopes? Are you seeing visitors to old horoscopes, or are you holding onto them for your own records?
No, we are not holding them for any records at all, not that I see or know if there is any benefit in doing so. We currently do keep backup copies offline.
That way, you could have a permanent "Daily Cancer" page with a more refined meta description that ever changes, and every day you just go in and edit that sign. Same for all the other signs, and same for the weekly sign pages. Anytime people link to these pages, they would keep that value - and I think that might help your rankings.
Right now, with every horoscope being on its own separate daily page, say 2 people share that link on Facebook. Those links go straight to say the Cancer horoscope for June 1, 2015. That means they're kind of frozen in time. If instead you had a "Daily Cancer" page and they linked there, and then a week later they shared it again because they liked the new horoscope, you'd have 4 incoming links to the same page.
I think I see what your saying now: So if I'm correct in my understanding I can create a separate page for each star sign, and every day while updating the dailies I can go in and replace the old with the new this way the links are staying the same etc the only thing I would be tweaking is the meta tags des now and again and the content for each star sign.
Is that correct?
Thanks for you in-depth look into it really appreciate it.
Justin
-
Yes - duplicate content is exactly what I mean. If you're a human visitor, it's a good way to be able to look at multiple signs quickly. I do this too - I always look at all the signs for my family. But if you're a search engine, on each sign's page, you see the full text for all the signs, so it looks like there are 12 pages with almost exactly the same content. Yes, it would be a good idea to look at competitors' sites and see how they handle it. One option might be to have each page with only that one sign's content on it, and use AJAX to pull in each additional sign - so visitors would see exactly what they're seeing now, and be able to immediately click another sign and see that horoscope, but because spiders typically don't see much content that is pulled in by JavaScript, they would see 12 unique pages to index. It looks like this competitor is doing it this way: http://astrostyle.com/daily-horoscopes/cancer-daily-horoscope/
Another question I might ask is, why are you archiving all the daily horoscopes? Are you seeing visitors to old horoscopes, or are you holding onto them for your own records? You may have visitors looking at them, and if so, keep archiving as you go. But if you're not getting much traffic to them, I would suggest considering keeping your own backup copies offline. That way, you could have a permanent "Daily Cancer" page with a more refined meta description that ever changes, and every day you just go in and edit that sign. Same for all the other signs, and same for the weekly sign pages. Anytime people link to these pages, they would keep that value - and I think that might help your rankings. Right now, with every horoscope being on its own separate daily page, say 2 people share that link on Facebook. Those links go straight to say the Cancer horoscope for June 1, 2015. That means they're kind of frozen in time. If instead you had a "Daily Cancer" page and they linked there, and then a week later they shared it again because they liked the new horoscope, you'd have 4 incoming links to the same page.
-
Hi RedSweater,
Thanks for your in-depth response
Thats a great idea about the automatic date based title tags like the example you gave. Would it be wise to take a look at what my competitors are using? I can't figure out how they have set themselves up for this part.
My system was custom built - when you say this:
On a related note, I noticed the horoscopes for all the other signs actually appear on the same page, just in a modal, when you click on them.
This may be working against you because you have all the signs' content on multiple pages.
Would this create a duplicate content situation? Is that what you mean in terms of working against me?
I would try to find a way to keep only each sign's content on its page and link off to the other signs' individual pages for people who want to view multiple signs. That should really reinforce to crawlers that each page has unique content.
The reason why we did it like that is most people who are viewing their horoscopes like to view their partners, friends or family horoscopes as well. Would you be able to elaborate on this? I have looked into my competitors and can't quiet see how they have done this.
I can provide you a link to competitors horoscope pages?
I would love to hear your feedback on this,
Thanks so much
Justin
-
Since it doesn't sound feasible to create new titles and meta descriptions by hand every time, I would come up with something automatic that's date-based. For example, your title could be "6/11/2015 Daily Horoscope for Cancer." Meta descriptions will be harder - if you're using something like WordPress with Yoast's SEO plugin, you could have it auto-create the meta description using the first line of your actual content. I'm sure you could find or create a similar auto-functionality if you're using a different platform. That way you aren't doing anything by hand, yet you have a unique title and helpful meta description for each page on the site.
On a related note, I noticed the horoscopes for all the other signs actually appear on the same page, just in a modal, when you click on them. This may be working against you because you have all the signs' content on multiple pages. I would try to find a way to keep only each sign's content on its page and link off to the other signs' individual pages for people who want to view multiple signs. That should really reinforce to crawlers that each page has unique content.
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
-
Schema Markup for regular web pages?
I'm a bit confused about what Schema markup should be applied to such regular, informative web pages.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gray_jedi
We have a few pages describing our technology and solutions. These pages are not products or news articles. And they are not something that should be reviewed/rated. What Schema markup should be used for a standard run-of-the mill web page?
Is there a good reference / tutorial for optimizing the schema markup of an informational website? Any advice is much appreciated, thank you!0 -
Redirecting 86'd Brand Product Category Page
What would be the approach if my website is no longer selling products for a brand that is driving top organic traffic? Where should I redirect the traffic on the page? I'm trying to decide between the homepage or another similar brand product page.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
A doorway-page vendor has made my SEO life a nightmare! Advice anyone!?
Hey Everyone, So I am the SEO at a mid-sized nationwide retailer and have been working there for almost a year and half. This retailer is an SEO nightmare. Imagine the worst possible SEO nightmare, and that is my unfortunate yet challenging everyday reality. In light of the new algorithm update that seems to be on the horizon from Google to further crack down on the usage of doorway pages, I am coming to the Moz community for some desperately needed help. Before I was employed here, the eCommerce director and SEM Manager connected with a vendor that told them basically that they can do a PPC version of SEO for long-tail keywords. This vendor sold them on the idea that they will never compete with our own organic content and can bring in incremental traffic and revenue due to all of this wonderful technology they have that is essentially just a scraper. So for the past three years, this vendor has been creating thousands of doorway pages that are hosted on their own server but our masked as our own pages. They do have a massive index / directory in HTML attached to our website and even upload their own XML site maps to our Google Web Master Tools. So even though they “own” the pages, they masquerade as our own organic pages. So what we have today is thousands upon thousands of product and category pages that are essentially built dynamically and regurgitated through their scraper / platform, whatever. ALL of these pages are incredibly thin in content and it’s beyond me how Panda has not exterminated them. ALL of these pages are built entirely for search engines, to the point that you would feel like the year was 1998. All of these pages are incredibly over- optimized with spam that really is equivalent to just stuffing in a ton of meta keywords. (like I said – 1998) Almost ALL of these scraped doorway pages cause an incredible amount of duplicate content issues even though the “account rep” swears up and down to the SEM Manager (who oversees all paid programs) that they do not. Many of the pages use other shady tactics such as meta refresh style bait and switching. For example: The page title in the SERP shows as: Personalized Watch Boxes When you click the SERP and land on the doorway page the title changes to: Personalized Wrist Watches. Not one actual watch box is listed. They are ALL simply the most god awful pages in terms of UX that you will ever come across BUT because of the sheer volume of this pages spammed deep within the site, they create revenue just playing the odds game. Executives LOVE revenue. Also, one of this vendor’s tactics when our budget spend is reduced for this program is to randomly pull a certain amount of their pages and return numerous 404 server errors until spend bumps back up. This causes a massive nightmare for me. I can go on and on but I think you get where I am going. I have spent a year and half campaigning to get rid of this black-hat vendor and I am finally right on the brink of making it happen. The only problem is, it will be almost impossible to not drop in revenue for quite some time when these pages are pulled. Even though I have helped create several organic pages and product categories that will pick-up the slack when these are pulled, it will still be awhile before the dust settles and stabilizes. I am going to stop here because I can write a novel and the millions of issues I have with this vendor and what they have done. I know this was a very long and open-ended essay of this problem I have presented to you guys in the Moz community and I apologize and would love to clarify anything I can. My actual questions would be: Has anyone gone through a similar situation as this or have experience dealing with a vendor that employs this type of black-hat tactic? Is there any advice at all that you can offer me or experiences that you can share that can help be as armed as I can when I eventually convince the higher-ups they need to pull the plug? How can I limit the bleeding and can I even remotely rely on Google LSI to serve my organic pages for the related terms of the pages that are now gone? Thank you guys so much in advance, -Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VBlue1 -
Rank product pages
What are the best ways to rank your product pages, We have a few ecommerce sites and we want to increase the position of both our product and catagory pages. I know that gaining more popularity will help to increase the DA but I want my product pages to rank higher.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Content website of the year 2009 ....
I own a network of travel sites, after all the changes that happened to past 12 months and so. I am really thinking if maybe my sites are worthless. I mean, let's be honest here. I understand what Google is doing. So i ask myself. If I wasn't trying to make a living with google adsense and affiliate sites... Would I still have these travel sites ? well the truth is NO NO... Therefore should i forget about my content site ? It is a punch of useless content. well some interesting information but it is a travel guide like many others online. What do you think? now it is better to focus on your product site or create 1 good websites rather than a network of sites that worked very veryyy well the past 10 years...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sandyallain0 -
Is it a duplicate content ?
Hi Please check this link : http : // www . speedguide . net/news/yahoo-acquires-email-management-app-xobni-5252 it's a post where the admin just write the first 200-300 words and then insert the "read more here" which links to the original post This make the website active as the admin always add new content but is this not against google rules as it's a duplicate content ?? Can you tell me the name of this strategy ? Is this really work to make the website active ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | loumi0 -
Using Programmatic Content
My company has been approached a number of times by computer generated content providers (like Narrative Science and Comtex). They are providing computer generated content to a number of big name websites. Does anyone have any experience working with companies like this? We were burned by the first panda update because we were busing boilerplate forms for content
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SuperMikeLewis0 -
EXPERT CHALLENGE: What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?
FOR ALL SEO THOUGHT LEADERS...What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change? NOTE: My hope is that the responses left on this thread will ultimately benefit all members of the community and give recognition to the true thought leaders within the SEO space. That being said, my challenge is a 2 part question: With the 80/20 rule in mind, and in light of recent algorithm changes, what would YOU focus most of your SEO budget on if you had to choose? Let's assume you're in a competitive market (ie #1-5 on page 1 has competitors with 20,000+ backlinks - all ranging from AC Rank 7 to 1). How would you split your total monthly SEO budget as a general rule? Ex) 60% link building / 10% onsite SEO / 10% Social Media / 20% content creation? I realize there are many "it depends" factors but please humor us anyways. Link building appears to have become harder and harder as google releases more and more algorithm changes. For link building, the only true white hat way of proactively generating links (that I know of) is creating high quality content that adds value to customers (ie infographics, videos, etc.), guest blogging, and Press Releases. The con to these tactics is that you are waiting for others to find and pick up your content which can take a VERY long time, so ROI is difficult to measure and justify to clients or C-level management. That being said, how are YOU allocating your link building budget? Are all of these proactive link building tactics a waste of time now? I've heard it couldn't hurt to still do some of these, but what are your thoughts and what is / isn't working for you? Here they are: A. Using spun articles edited by US based writers for guest blog content B. 301 Redirects C. Social bookmarking D. Signature links from Blog commenting E. Directory submissions F. Video Submissions G. Article Directory submissions H. Press release directory submissions I. Forum Profile Submissions J. Forum signature links K. RSS Feed submissions L. Link wheels M. Building links (using scrapebox, senukex, etc.) to pages linked to your money site N. Links from privately owned networks (I spoke to an SEO company that claims to have over 4000 unique domains which he uses to boost rankings for his clients) O. Buying Contextual Text Links All Expert opinions are welcomed and appreciated 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoeric2