Is a dynamic online user list bad for SEO?
-
Hello everyone,
I have a question that is currently puzzling me, and I hope you can help me with.
On musicianspage.com (one of our websites), we show a list of online users embedded within the page which, as you may expect, changes all the time according to who's online at that moment. That list appears on every page of the site, so at any time any page on the site has a different content and different link profile (sometimes we have just a few users connected, other times we may have over 50 users connected at the same time).
My question is: is such a "dynamical-embedded" list bad, good or neutral from a SEO stand point? If it is bad, what do you suggest to do? Put it inside a frame? Using AJAX?
Any thoughts and suggestions are very welcome!
Thanks in advance to anyone reading this.
All the best,
Fabrizio
-
Thank you Geoff, that makes sense to me... I will try to pursue what you are suggesting.
Thanks you again!
All the best,
Fab.
-
Hey Fabrizio,
I think this is a very case by case issue. For musicianspage.com, I would probably lean towards make it JS based or removing it primarily because most of the profile pages that I saw are pretty empty and I wouldn't want search engines to find a lot of thin content here.
There could be value in this if all users had a more complete profile AND they participated in a lot forum threads - this could help with content discovery (for the threads) and pass link equity to the threads, helping them bring in traffic. If this is your goal, you would need to do a leader board, not just online users, so that you are getting users who have actually answered questions and these users are most likely to invest in their profiles and fill them out well. As it stands now, if you want to keep the online users, I'd probably make it JS based.
Good luck!
-Geoff
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
-
Five best practice for SEO
Hello Everyone, I am new to SEO and need some help. I have 6 sites and I need to know what are the top 5 strategies for Off page seo. I mean the most important ones. Thanks Abie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | signsny0 -
WhoIs, SEO & Privacy
Is WHOIS data used by Google as a ranking signal? We had a website that had some bad SEO work done a while ago hence took a knock, If I use the same WHOIS data on a new site is that likely to cause an issue? Also I don't like the idea of providing too much information for privacy reasons, so have tended to stick to general email addresses and department names rather than actual personal information. Is that a bad approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Volusion SEO
I have an SEO setting on our Volusion e-commerce store enabled, it is titled "Enable full URL for Home Page Canonical Link (include /default.asp)" I am questioning whether or not this should be enabled for optimal SEO performance. Can anyone provide any advice on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
What recommendations do you have for the SEO of this site?
Hello, Could you glance at this site and let me know if you see anything we could improve upon? www.nlpca.com A couple of notes: We're over-optimized for the term "NLP" on the home page. We're removing the footer links soon. We have 2 locations: San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. Our main keyword is "NLP Training" but we would like to rank higher for the keyword "NLP". Also note that we're completely white hat, but we have international site-wide backlinks, and a couple of site-wide backlinks in site's footers - all friends and colleagues of ours.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
International SEO
Hi all, The company that I work for is planning to target some french (and some other foreign) keywords. The thing is, in our industry, you can't just hire someone to translate the content/pages. The pages have to be translated by an accredited translator. Here's the thing, it costs a LOT of money just to translate a few thousand words. So, the CEO decided to translate a few of our 'core' pages and SEO them to see if it brings results. My questions are, would it be possible from a technical point of view to simply translate a few pages? Would that cause a problem for the search engine crawlers? Would those pages be 'seen' as duplicates? Thanks in advance guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdwardDennis0 -
How would I be able to make sure Google lists search results as a combined listing opposed to a single listing/
I am slightly confused about how to let Google know to index our site as a complex listing opposed to individual page listing. Our site is well established and has over 3500 indexes. Does this have to do with the Sitemap or is it something else? Is there a way to expedite Google to list our site like the example below. Thank you for your help! Whole Foods Market
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | olive13<cite>www.wholefoodsmarket.com/</cite>Owns and operates chain of natural foods supermarkets which sell meat and poultry free of growth hormones and antibiotics, unprocessed grains and cereals, ... | ### Stores
Hours: Open 8am to 10pm Seven Days a Week. Note Holiday ... | ### Online Ordering
welcome find a store healthy eating about our products ... |
| ### CouponsHere they are: printable coupons from the latest issue of our in ... | ### Recipes
This boldly flavored casserole is an excellent way to use leftover ... |
| ### CareersHiring Process - Job Fairs and Events - Career Paths - ... | ### Lamar
Located just blocks from where Whole Foods Market began as ... |
| More results from wholefoodsmarket.com » |0 -
Mobile SEO
Hey, In the following article, Google recommended using a 301 redirect but doesn't specify why. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html I assume this is to pass over link equity to the relevant mobile/desktop variation. Can anyone confirm this? Also is there any other reason? Again assuming this would keep the correct URLs in the correct index? Anything else anyone can chip in would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1