Indexing content behind a login
-
Hi,
I manage a website within the pharmaceutical industry where only healthcare professionals are allowed to access the content. For this reason most of the content is behind a login.
My challenge is that we have a massive amount of interesting and unique content available on the site and I want the healthcare professionals to find this via Google!
At the moment if a user tries to access this content they are prompted to register / login. My question is that if I look for the Google Bot user agent and allow this to access and index the content will this be classed as cloaking? I'm assuming that it will.
If so, how can I get around this? We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages!
I look forward to all of your suggestions as I'm struggling for ideas now!
Thanks
Steve
-
Thanks everyone... It's not as restrictive as patient records... Basically, because of the way our health service works in the UK we are not allowed to promote material around our medicines to patients, it should be restricted only to HCP's. If we are seen to be actively promoting to patients we run the risk of a heavy fine.
For this reason we need to take steps to ensure that we only target this information towards HCP's and therefore we require them to register before being able to access the content...
My issue is that HCP's may search for a Brand that we supply but we have to be very careful what Brand information we provide outside of log-in. Therefore the content we can include on landing pages cannot really be optimised for the keywords that they are searching for! Hence why I want the content behind log-in indexed but not easily available without registering...
It's a very difficult place to be!
-
I guess I was just hoping for that magic answer that doesn't exist! It's VERY challenging to optimise a site with these kinds of restrictions but I get I just need to put what I can on the landing pages and optimise as best I can with the content I can show!
We also have other websites aimed at patients where all the content is open so I guess I'll just have to enjoy optimising these instead
Thanks for all your input!
Steve
-
Steve,
Yes that would be cloaking. I wouldn't do that.
As Pete mentioned below, your only real options at this point are to make some of the content, or new content, available for public use. If you can't publish abstracts at least, then you'll have to invest in copywriting content that is legally available for the public to get traffic that way, and do your best to convert them into subscribers.
-
Hi Steve
If it can only be viewed legally by health practitioners who are members of your site, then it seems to me you don't have an option as by putting any of this content into the public domain on Google by whatever method you use will be deemed illegal by whichever body oversees it.
Presumably you cannot also publish short 25o word summaries of the content?
If not, then I think you need to create pages that are directly targeted at marketing the site to health practitioners. Whilst the pages won't be able to contain the content you want to have Google index, they could still contain general information and the benefits of becoming a subscriber.
Isn't that the goal of the site anyway, i.e. to be a resource to health practitioners? So, without being able to make the content public, you have to market to them through your SEO or use some other form or indirect or direct marketing to encourage them to the site to sign up.
I hope that helps,
Peter -
Thanks all... Unfortunately it is a legal requirement that the content is not made publicly available but the challenge then is how do people find it online!
I've looked at first click free and pretty much ever other option I could think of and yet to find a solution
My only option is to allow Google Bot through the authentication which will allow it to index the content but my concern is that this is almost certainly cloaking...
-
Please try looking at "First Click Free" by Google
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en
I think this is along the lines of what you are looking for.
-
Hi Steve
As you already know, if a page is not crawlable it's not indexable. I don't think there is any way around this without changing the strategy of the site. You said, _"We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages". _Is that limitation imposed by a legal requirement or something like that, or by the site owners because they don't want to give free access?
If the marketing strategy for the site is to grow the membership, then as it's providing a content service to its members then it has to give potential customers a sample of its wares.
I think there are two possible solutions.
(1) increase the amount of free content available on the site to give the search engines more content to crawl and make available to people searching or
(2) Provide a decent size excerpt, say the first 250 words of each article as a taster for potential customers and put the site login at the point of the "read more". That way you give the search engines something to get their teeth into which is of a decent length but it's also a decent size teaser to give potential customers an appetite to subscribe.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
What would be the best course of action to nullify negative effects of our website's content being duplicated (Negative SEO)
Hello, everyone About 3 months ago I joined a company that deals in manufacturing of transportation and packaging items. Once I started digging into the website, I noticed that a lot of their content was "plagiarized". I use quotes as it really was not, but they seemed to have been hit with a negative SEO campaign last year where their content was taken and being posted across at least 15 different websites. Literally every page on their website had the same problem - and some content was even company specific (going as far as using the company's very unique name). In all my years of working in SEO and marketing I have never seen something at the scale of this. Sure, there are always spammy links here and there, but this seems very deliberate. In fact, some of the duplicate content was posted on legitimate websites that may have been hacked/compromised (some examples include charity websites. I am wondering if there is anything that I can do besides contacting the webmasters of these websites and nicely asking for a removal of the content? Or does this duplicate content not hold as much weight anymore as it used to. Especially since our content was posted years before the duplicate content started popping up. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hasanovic0 -
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
Duplicate Content Product Descriptions - Technical List Supplier Gave Us
Hello, Our supplier gives us a small paragraph and a list of technical features for our product descriptions. My concern is duplicate content. Here's what my current plan is: 1. To write as much unique content (rewriting the paragraph and adding to it) as there is words in the technical description list. Half unique content half duplicate content. 2. To reword the technical descriptions (though this is not always possible) 3. To have a custom H1, Title tag and meta description My question is, is the list of technical specifications going to create a duplicate content issue, i.e. how much unique content has to be on the page for the list that is the same across the internet does not hurt us? Or do we need to rewrite every technical list? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Question regarding subdomains and duplicate content
Hey everyone, I have another question regarding duplicate content. We are planning on launching a new sector in our industry to satisfy a niche. Our main site works as a directory with listings with NAP. The new sector that we are launching will be taking all of the content on the main site and duplicating it on a subdomain for the new sector. We still want the subdomain to rank organically, but I'm having struggles between putting a rel=canonical back to main site, or doing a self-referencing canonical, but now I have duplicates. The other idea is to rewrite the content on each listing so that the menu items are still the same, but the listing description is different. Do you think this would be enough differentiating content that it won't be seen as a duplicate? Obviously make this to be part of the main site is the best option, but we can't do that unfortunately. Last question, what are the advantages or disadvantages of doing a subdomain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny0 -
Duplicate Content does effect
Hey there, I am Doing SEO For one of my client For mortgage Company. As i have Checked in Other mortgage sites, they used to have Same Content/Details, In all Websites, & my client site have also Some of them, So my Question is as per Google If there Duplicate Content, it will be Got penalize, But as i see Ranking & traffic For competitor site, They have Duplication, then also Rank For 1st page,. what is Reason behind? so i also Implement/Execute our site With that same content?? or i'll Got penalize?? Thnx in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iepl20010 -
Backlink Indexing - will this technique hurt or help?
So I came across this idea on YouTube: Indexing your backlinks. I understand its not enough to just have google crawl your pages - you want them indexed. So, if you create backlinks on say a blog or social profile, will it benefit you to have them submitted to other popular blogs, news / pr sites, video channels - of which may be unrelated - for the sole purpose of getting them not just crawled but indexed? There are SEO companies that I have seen that claim they do exactly that (publish your backlinks all over the web - making backlinks for backlinks) but in reality is this a good thing or a bad thing? Could this help rankings or hurt them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | momentum_technology_services0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Copied Content/ Copied Website/
Hello guys, I was checking my product descriptions and I found out that there is a website that is using my descriptions word by word, also they use company name, product images, they have a link that sends you to my site, contact form.. I tried to purchase something and the order came through our email, but i made an inquire and it didn't come through. Also they have a sub-folder with my company name. Also they have url's with my company name, and this isn't right is it? I am confused and honestly I don't know what to do, we don't take part to any affiliation program or anything like that and we don't ship out of Europe. This is a Chinese website. Just for curiosity, I noticed that one of our competitors is there as well, and it does seem weird. Here is the links: www.everychina . com/company/repsole_limited-hz1405d06.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PremioOscar0