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
-
On-page SEO opinion on this Wordpress theme
Hi everyone. As an SEO agency we've been moving more toward genesis themes, however we have a client who really wants to redesign his website using the following theme: http://themeforest.net/item/this-way-wp-full-videoimage-background-with-audio/943634 - the theme would be images with no audio on the homepage. He is a remodeling contractor and likes the design and functionality of the theme. I'd like to get others feedback and opinions on what you think about the on-page SEO of this theme? Thanks.
Web Design | | WillWatrous0 -
Links not visible in "Google cache text version" but visible in "Fetch as Google" in Webmaster tool
Hi Guys, There seems some issue with the coding due to which Google is not indexing half of our menu bar links. The cached text version of http://www.99acres.com/ is not showing links present in dropdown "All India" , dropdown "Advice" and "Hot Projects" tab in blue bar on top menu whereas these links are visible in "Fetch as Google" in Google Webmaster tool. Any clue to why is there a difference between the links shown in Google webmaster and Google cache text version. Thanks in advance 🙂
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Advice needed: Google crawling for single page applicartions with java script
Hi Moz community,we have a single page application (enjoywishlist.com) with a lot of content in java script light boxes. There is a lot of valuable content embedded but google can not crawl the content and we can missing out on some opportunities as a result. I was wondering if someone was able to solve a similar issue (besides moving the content from the java script to the HTML body). There appears to be a few services sprouting up to handle single page applications and crawling in google.http://getseojs.com/https://prerender.io/Did anyone use these services? Some feedback would be much appreciated!ThanksAndreas
Web Design | | AndreasD0 -
How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?
Hi, This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'. How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page? Alex
Web Design | | WebmasterAlex0 -
Wordpress Pages not indexing in Google
Hi, I've created a Wordpress site for my client. I've produced 4 content pages and 1 home page but in my sitemap it only says I have 1 page indexed. Also SEOmoz only finds 1 page. I'm lost on what the problem could be. The domain name is www.dobermandeen.co.uk Many thanks for any help. Alex
Web Design | | SeoSheikh0 -
List of products, also on home
What happens with sites that have the complete list of products in the home page and in the "Products" section. Would like to know your opinion as web developers and users and like SEO professionals. I'm in duality like web developer, somehow my subconscience is telling me that is stupid to have it on both places... And the home page is getting nice results and comments from the users, so, would consider quitting the "Products" teaser view. But of course, eliminate the "Products" section is somehow... un natural.... And what happens with SEO, I read somewhere that it's not very good to have all the "rank" spread in so many links in the home page... I don't even understand it completely or neven sure they said rank or juice..., but it's something that is concerning me... We are talking about 20 products, that can grow. I'm looking to have a better SEO, but also the UX is very important, even more than SEO (I know good UX is better SEO). Thanks in advance to any contribution.
Web Design | | MilosMilcom0 -
Why is Google sending traffic to our homepage, not our optimized pages?
Hello Forum, My team and I just completely redid a yoga eCommerce site, including its SEO. The old version of the site didn't feature page-specific optimization and, as a result, Google's search results for our keywords almost always directed visitors to the homepage. For example, a Google search for the term "yoga bolster" sent users to the homepage, not the product category page for yoga bolsters. After redoing the site and optimizing specific pages (i.e. the yoga bolster page is now optimized for the keyword "yoga bolster"), the Google search results are still taking users to the homepage, not the optimized page. (i.e. if you search for yoga bolster, find our search result, and click the search result link, you're taken to the homepage, not the bolster page) It's only been about 36 hours since we've launched the new website and submitted it to Google's webmaster tools. Does anyone know why Google is still sending people to our homepage and not the keyword-optimized pages we created? Is this a timing issue?
Web Design | | pano0 -
Combining web pages and it's affects on SEO?
We are looking into amending a website we are working on to try and combine 2 or 3 current pages onto one page. This site is similar to an estate agents site and currently has images, map, floor plan sub pages etc. Can anyone tell me, if we were to combine these pages and include the above details on one page, how that would affect the current search engine rankings?
Web Design | | SoundinTheory0