Get-targeted homepage for users vs crawlers
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Hello there! This is my first post here on SEOmoz.
I'll get right into it then...
My website is housingblock.com, and the homepage runs entirely off of geo-targeting the user's IP address to display the most relevant results immediately to them. Can potentially save them a search or three.
That works great. However, when crawlers frequent the site, they are obviously being geo-targeted for their IP address, too. Google has come to the site via several different IP addresses, resulting in several different locations being displayed for it on the homepage (Mountain View, CA or Clearwater, MI are a couple).
Now, this poses an issue because I'm worried that crawlers will not be able to properly index the homepage because the location, and ultimately all the content, keeps changing. And/or, we will be indexed for a specific location when we are in fact a national website (I do not want to have my homepage indexed/ranked under Mountain View, CA, or even worse, Clearwater, MI [no offence to any Clearwaterians out there]).
Of course, my initial instinct is to create a separate landing page for the crawlers, but for obvious reasons, I am not going to do that (I did at one point, but quickly reverted back because I figured that was definitely not the route to go, long-term).
Any ideas on the best way to approach this, while maintaining the geo-targeted approach for my users? I mean, isn't that what we're supposed to do? Give our users the most relevant content in the least amount of time? Seems that in doing so, I am improperly ranking my website in the eyes of the search engines.
Thanks everybody!
- Marc
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Your most recent Google cache is showing the target as Toronto,Ontario confirming your concerns.
The challenge you are facing is similar to sites like Yellowpages.com, superpages.com and any other location targeted sites may face. The way these sites have worked around is by adding relevant static content to the website.
By adding relevant content to your home page your will be able to minimize the location targeting effect. Plus, search spiders already know that you are not limited to the location of IP because they have indexed multiple pages from your website.
I also noticed that your home page outbound link to content ratio is upside down. You have too many links on the homepage and extremely limited content. Additionally, the text blurb on the top is not user friendly and stuffed with too many keywords. You can easily replace this text with user friendly static content such as your website USP.
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