Our "home page" is behind a member wall, options?
-
So www.pch.com(portal) redirects to www.pch.com/unrecognized(landing page) if you are not registered with us and logged in. This means that the search engines are not logged in, so they see only our landing page.
It used to be that there was no portal/home, on pch.com, that was just the landing page, but that changed about 6 months ago. We do rank for our brand terms, but my company would like to rank for terms like "sweepstakes." They DO understand why we don't, thankfully. They don't think SEO is magic voodoo. They get it. But they asked for options, as I have said that the portal on www.pch.com really is a good page to optimize for non-brand, core terms like sweepstakes....but only if the search engines can see it.
I gave them these options, and they asked me to seek out more. So any thoughts would be good:
1. Best case scenario would be to abandon the landing page, just have the keyword rich portal page be the actual home page with no re-direct. (this won't happen, but I decided it needed to be first on my list).
2. Turn the portal into the home page (remove the redirect), but have the landing page overlay in a light box. This should, if I am not mistaken, be a best of both worlds situation, where the light box landing page would still have all of the value of the actual keyword rich portal page behind it.
3. If the landing page has to remain as it does now with the non-logged in redirect to it, change the URLs so that the landing page is www.pch.com and the portal becomes www.pch.com/members/ or something like that.
Any other thoughts? Thanks!
Kenn Gold
Publishers Clearing House
-
And in this case, "can't" is not only dev code, but marketing code also. They are so afraid of change here...but I get that, we are successful too.
And just my saying "hey, we have the worst case scenario for SEO right now" is not always enough...they want more opinions. Which is why this Q&A feature of SEOMoz is awesome! Thanks again for your thoughtful responses.
-
Well, it's hard to refute your data with my total lack of data Have you tried any kind of hybrid approach - make it image-rich but use CSS-styled text and avoid the fully boxed/bannered approach? I'm just thinking that might not only make the button stand out even more, but it would make the text crawlable. Could be a dual win.
Unfortunately, when it comes to things like dynamic content, "can't" is often dev-code for "won't". I've been on that side of the fence, so I don't want to speak ill, but it's frustrating. I do think you're #3 is at least a good start, and should be relatively straightforward. I definitely share your concerns about the current setup.
-
Yes, it IS a giant ad The CTR for that "Begin" button is so incredibly high though, that it would shock you. I have been doing landing page optimization for conversion for years, and I am surprised at how high the CTR is for that.
I am not actually sure why we are not serving the home up dynamically, I have suggested it, along with some of the other suggestions I posted above. Most likely it is related to our very complicated proprietary CMS (actually two of them).
Thanks for the response!
-
I do not like that 303-redirect setup. It looks like Google is indexing pch.com, but the cache is empty, and title/snippet match the non-redirected page. This could look like an odd form of cloaking, and landing on "/urecognized" seems like a recipe for trouble (it's a really bad URL from a UX perspective, too - it sounds like an error page).
I'd also argue that the page for new visitors looks like a giant ad. It needs some explanatory content. Yes, many people know who you are, but we don't know what the site does or why we should care. What's "obvious" internally is completely opaque to the average visitor. Richer content on this page would serve both SEO and conversion.
Could you serve up the home-page dynamically - display member content if they're logged in but generic content if they're not, and avoid the redirect entirely? That's not quite like your (1) or (2), and I think it's safer than (2). If not, then (3) would be preferable, worst-case. Once a member is logged in and knows the site, a redirect is no problem.
-
Of course it is not a 301 redirect, it is not a perm redirect as it is a conditional redirect only, based on your status of being logged in or not.
I do see that I switched back and forth between our internal language for these pages and will try to clarify.
-
Please clarify what url you're talking about when you say "landing page" and what url you're talking about when you say "portal"? Also, I think your question would be easier to understand if you used "home page" to mean the index page--but I'm not sure that's what you're doing.
Also, your redirect from the index page to the unrecognized page is a 303, not a 301.
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
-
Needs clarification: How "Disallow: /" works?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. I have noticed we have given "Disallow: /" in one of our sub-directory beside homepage. So, how it going to work now? Will this "Disallow: /" at sub-directory level going to disallow only that directory or entire website? If it is going to work for entire website; we have already given one more Disallow: / at homepage level blocking few folders. How it is going to handle with two Disallow: / commands? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Toggle Tabs on pages - How to present information to users
Hi all, I can use some help with SEO/UX related question I have got. I have a client who has some toggel tabs on its website. Is there a way to display the relevant information from these toggle tabs when a user lands on the page instead of having the same toggle tab show for whenever a user reaches the page? What I am trying to understand is that if a user searched for "vitamin C benefit" (lets say) in Google and then clicks on the link, the user is presented with the "benefits" tab on the page instead of "side effects" tab. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks
Web Design | | Malika1
Malika0 -
Is it still necessary to have a "home" page button/link in the top nav?
Or is it not necessary to have a "home" tab/link because everybody by this time knows you can get to the home page by clicking on the logo?
Web Design | | FindLaw0 -
Google Translate with "no-follow" just for users' use, no ranking
Hello, I tried to search but here is a little unique situation. I would like to translate my website in 2-3 different languages not for ranking purpose, but only for some minority users within Italy to understand the content in their native language. Using "no-follow" with a Google Translate link would damage SEO? if not I would like to use it. Here are few points: Give users the ability to switch the content to their language with a link Tell Google not to follow the translated pages, because I don't want them to be used for ranking or searches I would start simply with Google Translate to see if people actually are interested, then later translate by human but still don't want google to follow I could also start with human translation instead of Google Translate if really needed, I know it is a no no. What I'm very interested is to make sure that those pages under "no-follow" won't affect my SEO in good or bad right now, because we would like to keep as it is. Thanks a lot
Web Design | | angelowei0 -
How to redirect special pages to new domain?
Hello. I have 2 websites in diffrent category and i want to move some of my visitor that arrived in specific page of doamin1 (url like this: http://example.com/pages/.........)to root of domain 2.
Web Design | | vahidafshari450 -
Does using role="heading" instead of H1 in HTML code affects SEO?
Does using role="heading" instead of affect SEO? http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Headings_using_role%3Dheading
Web Design | | LNEseo0 -
Still too many internal links reported on page
Hi Guys I am new here, and very much learning a lot, and enjoying the benefits of being an SEOMoz user. So here goes with my first question (probably of many). I have known for sometime that our website has a top heavy number of links in the primary navigation. But I wasn't too sure how important this was. Our main objective was to make an east to use nav for customers. All of the feedback we have had says that customers really like our navigation, as it is easy to use etc etc. However, when running an SEOMoz campaign on our site, again we got back that there are too many links on the pages. Example, home page has 500+ links. So I decided to do something about this. I have implemented what I think is a good solution where by the drop down navigation isn't loaded on first load. If the user then hovers over one of our "departments" the sub navigation is loaded via Ajax and dropped in. This means if the user wants it, they get it, if not then it's not loaded with the page. My theory being that Google loads the page without all the links, but a user gets the links as and when they need them. I tested with the SEOMoz toolbar and this tells me that when I load the home page there is 167 links in it vs 500+ previously. However, the my campaign still tells me that my home page has 450+ links (and this is a recent crawl of the page). Our site is here: www.uniquemagazines.co.uk Can you tell me is what I have done is a) a good solution and b) does the SEOMoz crawler have the ability to trigger the hover event and cause the AJAX load of the sub navigation content?
Web Design | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
I have a button that repeats it self many times on same page, what can i do so button name does not affect my SEO?
I have a shopping car button named "Add to car" but it repeats on many pages on my website, is this affecting my seo? If yes.. What should i do so it does not affect? Should button appear on hover? Thanks
Web Design | | SeMeAntoja0