Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?
-
To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>, often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name>
We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on dupe content on those unique 300 pages.
My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content?
The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL?
Any best practices we should know about?
-
Hi there,
Not sure I have enough information to weigh in on the first part of your question - Google will index whatever it sees on the page. If you deliver the content to Google, then they index it. The problem comes when you deliver different content to different users. Try a tool like SEO Browser to see how googlebot views your site.
To answer your second question, its often hard to rank near-duplicate pages for specific cities/states without running into massive duplicate content problems. Matt Cutts himself actually addressed this awhile back. He basically stated if you have multiple pages all targeting different locations, it's best to include a few lines of unique content on each page (I recommend the top) to make each unique.
“In addition to address and contact information, 2 or 3 sentences about what is unique to that location and they should be fine,” Source
But this technique would be very hard with only 300 product page. The alternative, stuffing these pages with city/state information for every combination possible, is not advised.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/on-page-optimization-to-rank-for-multiply-cities
So in the end, it's actually not hard to rank for city-state keywords without having it in the URL, but the information should be in the content or other places like the title tag or internal link structure - but to do this for 1000's of locations with only 300 pages without keyword stuffing is near impossible.
The best thing to do is figure out how to create unique content for every page you want to rank for, and take that route.
For example, I might create a "Seattle" page, create unique content for the top of the page, then list 50 or so products with the unique Seattle prices. (This is a rough strategy - you'd have to refine it greatly to work for your situation.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
I see. To get the city-state pages indexed then they must have their own URL. If you can only access it via posting a form (assumed for using the search feature), the a search engine can't see it.
To get round this, you could put a links underneath the search box to popular searches. This will get them indexed.
Does that answer the questions?
Thanks
Iain - Reload
-
Thanks for the reply. The city-state content wouldn't be driven by the URL, it would be driven by the city-state that the user searched for. ie if the person searched for <product><city><state>I would want our /product/ page to show up, and show them content in their local city state.</state></city></product>
-
Hi Editable Text,
In short if you show Google a crawlable link to the content with the dynamic header/content, and the content is driven by the unique URL, yes it will index it.
As with any SEO/life question, there are a few t&c's with this.
- The pages need to be unique enough not to be classed as duplicate content
- Make sure it's intelligently linked internally
- You have external links pointing deep into the site
- You have a decent site architecture
To answer you second question, you'll need unique pages for each location, unless your content would be so thin, you'd need to group them. The URL doesn't have to include the keyword, but it's damn helpful if it does.
Hope that helps
Iain - Reload Media
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
-
Https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment How to find the most relevant internal link pages
https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment How to find the most relevant internal link pages? site this page, find https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment-kr and https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment-jp Is there any other better way
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
Fixing Index Errors in the new Google Search Console - Help
Hi, So I have started using the new Search Console and for one of my clients, there are a few 'Index Coverage Errors'. In the old version you could simply, analyse, test and then mark any URLs as fixed - does anyone know if that is possible in the new version? There are options to validate errors but no 'mark as fixed' options. Do you need to validate the errors before you can fix them?
On-Page Optimization | | daniel-brooks0 -
Why are my pages de-indexed?
<form id="form-t3_37nfib9dz" class="usertext" action="http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/37nfib/why_were_my_pages_deindexed/#"> Hello all, I am very new to SEO. For some reason many of the pages on my site were de-indexed. Specifically the ones linked from this page: However other pages, like the ones linked from this page and this page were not de-indexed. http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/car-accident-injury-lawyers/[1] However the pages linked from this page were not de-indexed: http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/slip-and-fall-lawyers/[2] http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/podcastresources/[3] That first page itself was not de-indexed, just the site that it links to. It just happened today, so maybe I am jumping the gun but I doubt it. When I enter the page into google webmaster tools again and press fetch, one of the child pages, it re-indexes. What could be the problem here? I had someone re-write the content for every city but I have a feeling that there is less differences in the car accidents pages? Is this considered duplicated content do you think? Am I making some other mistake I can't think of? Is it just a one day blip (I doubt it) Let me know, thanks. </form>
On-Page Optimization | | RafeTLouis0 -
Google vs. Bing
We are having some really good results with our SEO strategies for local search and long tail searches for our clients on Google; however, Bing is a completely different story in a couple of cases. What is Bing looking for that Google is not? We have even noticed that something may rank well in Bing then not show up at all in Google? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | Strategexe0 -
WordPress - duplicate content
I'm using WordPress for my website. However, whenever I use the post section for news, I get a report back from SEOmoz saying that there's duplicate content. What it does is it posts them in the Category and Archive section. Does anyone know if Google sees this as duplicate content and if so how to stop it? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AAttias0 -
Sliders and Content Above the Fold
I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others. If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?
On-Page Optimization | | RobertFisher0 -
Google Sitemap
Does adding a Google Sitemap to webmaster tools REALLY help SEO? If so, are there any resources for help creating one? Here is my site: http://www.petmedicalcenter.com Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | PMC-312087
Brant0 -
Why does SEOmoz use /blog/content-title vs /category/content-title? Any difference?
Assume a brand new blog being designed and all other things equal. What are the pros & cons between using the url structure /blog/content-title vs. /category/content-title? Note:
On-Page Optimization | | JasonJackson
Both scenarios would be using categorical archiving.0