How do we ensure our new dynamic site gets indexed?
-
Just wondering if you can point me in the right direction. We're building a 'dynamically generated' website, so basically, pages don’t technically exist until the visitor types in the URL (or clicks an on page link), the pages are then created on the fly for the visitor.
The major concern I’ve got is that Google won’t be able to index the site, as the pages don't exist until they're 'visited', and to top it off, they're rendered in JSPX, which makes things tricky to ensure the bots can view the content
We’re going to build/submit a sitemap.xml to signpost the site for Googlebot but are there any other options/resources/best practices Mozzers could recommend for ensuring our new dynamic website gets indexed?
-
Hi Ryan,
Mirroring what Alan said, if the links are html text links - and they should be - then you will reduce your crawling problem with Google.
If you must use javascript links, make sure to duplicate them using
<noscript>tags so that Google will follow them.</p> <p><a href="http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355">http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355</a></p> <p>But be careful, Google doesn't treat <noscript> links like regular html links. At best, it's a poor alternative.</p> <p>Google derives so many signals from HTML links (anchor text, page rank, context, etc) that it's almost essential for a search engine friendly site to include them.</p> <p>The Beginners Guide to SEO has a relevant chapter on the basics of Search Engine Friendly Design and Development:</p> <p><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development">http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development</a></p> <p>Best of luck!</p></noscript>
-
Definitely want to get it right before launch. It's not going anywhere until it is absolutely ready!
-
The project this reminds me of took six months to complete and the 301's alone were a full time job.
Get it right the first time... you do not want to restructure like this on a large dynamic site.
I must say the project worked out but I got all my grey hair the day we threw the switch...
-
When I say its costly to rewrite 200,000+ URLS I mean it. Correcting mistakes here can cost big dollars.
In this case it wascostly to the tune of $60,000+ in costs and loss, however the bottle of bubbly at the end of the six month project was tasty.
Point being is to do it right the first time.
As I said before your best bet is documentation. Large dynamic sites generate large dynamic problems very quickly if not watched closely.
-
Thank you Khem, very helpful replies.
-
One more thing, I missed. Internal linking, make sure each of the page is linked with some text link. But avoid over linking. don't try to link all the pages from home page. Generally we links all the categories, pages from footer or site-wide links
-
Okay, lets do it step by step.
First, if it's a product website, create a separate feed for products and submit the sitemap with Google.
if not, that may you would have separate news/articles/videos sections, create separate xml sitemap for each section and submit with Google
If not, make sure to have only search engine friendly URLs, who says rewriting 200,000+ pages is costly, compare this cost with the business you'll loose when all your products would be listed in Google. So, make sure to rewrite all the dynamic URLs, if you feel that Google might face problem in crawling your website's URLs
Second, study webmaster tool's data very carefully for warnings, errors, so that you can figure out the issues which Google might have been facing while visits your websites.
Avoid duplicate entries of products, generally we don't pay attention to these things, and show same products on different pages in different categories. Google will filter all those duplicate pages, and can even penalize your website because of the duplicate content issue.
Third, keep promoting, but avoid grey/black hat techniques, there is no shortcut to the success. you'll have to spend time and money.
-
It's definitely something we're taking a very close look at. Another thing not mentioned is the use of canonical tags to head off duplicate content issues, which I'll be ensuring is implemented.
My next mugshot might have significantly grayer hair after this is all done...
-
Thanks very much for the replies.
I'll ensure proper cross linking from navigation, on pages themselves and submit a full XML sitemap, along with the social media options suggested. My other concern is that the content itself won't be visible to Googlebot due to the site being largely javascript driven, but that's something I'm working with the developers to resolve.
-
As you can tell from the response above indexation is not what you should be worried about.
Dynamic content is not fool proof. The mistakes are costly and you never want to be involved rewriting 200,000+ pages of dynamic rats nest.
Sorting abilities can cause dynamic urls and duplicate content.
Structure changes or practice changes can cause crawl errors. I looked at a report for a client early today that had 3000+ errors today compared to 20 last week. This was all due to a request made by the owner to the developer.
When enough attention is not paid to this stuff it causes real issues.
The best advice I can offer is to make sure you have a best practices document that must be followed by all developers.
-
Make sure every page you would like to be crawled is linked to in any matter. You can create natural links to them, e.g. from your navigation or in text links, or you can put them in a sitemap.
You can also link to these pages from websites like facebook, twitter to have fast crawling.
Tell Google in your robots.txt that it can access your website and make sure non of the pages you would like to be indexed carry the noindex-value in the robots meta-tag.
Good luck!
-
any link, but i should correct what i said, they will be crawled, not necessary indexwed
-
Thanks for the reply Alan, do you mean links from the sitemap?
-
If you have links to the pages they will be indexed, dynamic of static it does not matter
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
-
Over 500 thin URLs indexed from dynamically created pages (for lightboxes)
I have a client who has a resources section. This section is primarily devoted to definitions of terms in the industry. These definitions appear in colored boxes that, when you click on them, turn into a lightbox with their own unique URL. Example URL: /resources/?resource=dlna The information for these lightboxes is pulled from a standard page: /resources/dlna. Both are indexed, resulting in over 500 indexed pages that are either a simple lightbox or a full page with very minimal content. My question is this: Should they be de-indexed? Another option I'm knocking around is working with the client to create Skyscraper pages, but this is obviously a massive undertaking given how many they have. Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
Should I create a new site or keep company on parent company's subdomain?
I am working with a realty company that is hosted on a subdomain of the larger, parent realty company: [local realty company].[parent realty company].com How important is it to ride on the DA of the larger company (only about a 40)? I'm trying to weigh the value of creating an entirely separate domain for simplicity of the end user and Google bots: [local company].realtor They don't have any substantial links to their subdomain, so it wouldn't a huge loss. I have a couple options... Create an entirely new site on their current subdomain, leveraging the DA of the larger parent company. Create an entirely new site on a new URL, starting from scratch (which doesn't hurt you as much as it seems it once did). Create two sites, a micro site that targets a sector of their audience that they really want to reach, plus option (1) or (2). Love this community!
Technical SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru0 -
Do Sitespect links get indexed?
I put a link on one of my websites using sitespect because the next release is not for a few weeks. The reason for the link is to pass domain authority (SEO Juice) to the linked site. In my next release I will add the link in the actual code, but am hoping that from now till then google will crawl and index this link. So the question is, will google crawl and index links adding to webpages via sitespect? Here is the code: | * [http://www.](<a class=)yourdomain.com" class="" >YourDomain |
Technical SEO | | AlyssaN
| | | Link to Sitespect: http://www.sitespect.com/0 -
Need advice for new site's structure
Hi everyone, I need to update the structure of my site www.chedonna.it Basicly I've two main problems: 1. I've 61.000 index tag (more with no post)2. The category of my site are noindex I thought to fix my problem making the category index and the tag noindex, but I'm not sure if this is the best solution because I've a great number of tag idexed by Google for a long time. Mybe it is correct just to make the category index and linking it from the post and leave the tag index. Could you please let me know what's your opinion? Regards.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Google not visiting my site
Hi my site www.in2town.co.uk which is a lifestyle magazine has gone under a major refit. I am still working on it but it should be ready by the end of this week or sooner but one problem i have is, google is not visiting the site. I took a huge gamble to redo the site, even though before the refit i was getting a few thousand visitors a day, i wanted to make the site better as i was getting google webmaster errors. But now it seems google is not visiting the site. for example i am using sh404sef and i have put friendly url in the site and on the home page it has its name and meta tag but when you look at google it is not giving the site a name. Also it has not visited the site since october 13th Can anyone advise how to encourage google to visit the site please.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to turn WP site into Ecom site?
I have a couple of old wordpress sites that are old affiliate blogs. I currently sell products that are on amazon on these sites and sell quite a bit of volume. I have found a source and can afford the inventory to replace Amazon with my own product. So the dilema is how to turn these wordpress sites into ecommerce sites. The thing I am worried most about is that each site gets about 100-200 visitors a day for great buying keywords. I obviously don't want to lose my rankings. What are the options of turning a wordpress site into a store. I am not interested in plugins or some of the other solutions that make the store look very cheap and I would assume horribly convert. If you have inner pages ranking for keywords how does that work? Do the post pages become product pages? So to sum up I guess I am asking, what are the options that are of the higher quality that will also help me keep my rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
How can I get Google to crawl my site daily?
I was wndering if there was a trick to getting google to crawl my website daily?
Technical SEO | | labradoodlelocator0