Client Portal and SEO Considerations?
-
Hi Moz and Moz fans,
We are looking to add a client portal to the website. Basically, I haven't found too much on this with regard to SEO. The idea would be that certain parts of the website would be hidden under a pay wall and for subscribers, they would be able to see all content. I am wondering if anyone has any experience with that and what SEO considerations to take into account.
One thing we are particularly concerned about is how Google will index the portions of the website behind the pay wall, if at all. Obviously, we would rather that they don't index it, so that people can't find a way to get to the info without paying. I would imagine it would have to do with the type of coding, however, I am not a coding guru, so I am not 100% on that.
Anyway, anyone that has any experience in this kind of thing and can comment on this at all, any comment is welcome. Also, any documentation that could be helpful would be welcome too.
Thanks
-
Hi Sergey,
Thanks for this. I have read that article at some point a while back. Interesting read. I was just sort of sounding out a few ideas in my last post. The second option seems to be the best way to go.
Do you know of any other methods to do this that is common in the industry?
Thanks,
Brian -
Hi Brian,
Google can definitely crawl Javascript, although it is limited in a sense. Here is a great article addressing this.
I have seen many websites use the solution that you mention in your second paragraph. That is, creating a separate section of the domain (or creating a subdomain) for users who are logging in. GoogleBot will not be able to crawl anything that is beyond a login portal, so this is the most common solution. Of course you can also disallow the specific path or subdomain in robots.txt as well!
It comes down to how much content that you have behind the login portal. You want to figure out which part of your site you want to be crawled, and which parts you don't want. After that point it's a matter of figuring out the best solution for blocking that content from crawlers.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the reply.
This documentation was helpful. You mentioned the potential for the content to be seen in the cached version of pages. I read the Search Engine Land article there and shes sort of getting at how you don't want to block your content to search engines because then they can't be indexed and ranked. Let's say we don't really care about those parts of the pages that we wan't to block in terms of being indexed, which I sort of mentioned above. If we were to some how display those parts of the pages, images and text, in JavaScript, search engines wouldn't be able to crawl. Would those portions of the page still be visible in the cached version? I would imagine not if the search engines can't crawl JS, but not sure.
A second option I thought of was to create a separate subdomain for logged in users that would only be accessible through a log in form. Search engines cannot follow forms, so I would imagine, that gated content wouldn't be visible to crawlers and therefore not indexed. You could go one step farther and block the subdomain in robots.txt. Do you think that could be a possible solution?
Thanks again for the reply last week.
-Brian
-
Hi Brian,
I have a client working on correcting this issue with his site at the moment. They run a big media site that allows access once paid, but so may of these sites suffer with the same issue and because they allow Google to index the whole text, but only show a portion of it, this means that if you just look at the cached version, you can read it without paying.
In terms of correcting it, I would first have a read on how Google handles subscription sites. You can find that info here. Google prefers the "First click free" model.
There is additional reading on this subject over at Search Engine Land. First Click Free (FCF) is what you want to be looking into in more detail.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
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
-
Need suggestion: What is the best internal linking structure for our website to gain in SEO & UX too?
Hi all, We have 3 different editions of our product we are selling with 20 features. 1st edition & 2nd edition comes with 15 features in which 10 are common in each edition. 3rd edition comes with all 20 features. Now what's the best way to interlink and show the navigational menu to highlight 3 editions and features as well? Much appreciated if some one refer me a website with such structure. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
How is Single Page Application (SPA) bad for SEO
Hi guys. I am quite inspired of SPA technique. It's really amazing when all your interaction with the site is going on the fly and you don't see any page reloads. I've started implementing the site with this instruction and already found nice guys to make the design. The only downside of the using SPA which I can see **is the **SEO part. That's because the URL does not really change and different pages don't have their unique URL addresses.
Web Design | | Billy_gym
Actually they have, but it looks like: yoursite.com/#/products yoursite.com/#/prices yoursite.com/#/contact So all of them goes after # and being just anchors. For Google this mean all of these pages is just yoursite.com/ My question is what is really proven method to implement the URL structure in Single Page Application, so all the pages indexed by Google correctly (sorry I don't mention the other search engines because of market share). The other question, of course, is examples. It will be great to see real life site examples, better authority sites, which use SPA technique and well indexed by search engines.1 -
H1 for users or SEO in this case
Hello, A client of mine has an online store with a pre-made cart. In this cart the name below the product in the category pages and the H1 tag on the product pages themselves are the same textbox entry (they have to be the same thing) We want to add two product features to the product name, but this will make the H1 longer and diluted. Let me give you a fictional example, A category page for cross-trainer shoes would have products in it. Below each product it says things like "Nike Sports One Shoes" and "Adidas Action Series Shoes". We want to make it "Nike Sports Shoes size 7 through 12 for running and walking" and "Adidas Action Series Shoes size 5 through 10 for running, walking, and hiking". The reason for the change is that we want users to know about size and one more important feature before they visit the product page in our case to save them time. But this changes the H1 on the product page (a pre-made cart problem) from "Adidas Action Series Shoes" which is the direct search term to "Adidas Action Series Shoes size 5 through 10 for running, walking, and hiking" which is not a direct search term. This dilutes the keyword in the H1 but will save users time. We will put a tag inside the H1 just so you know, so that we can bold the name of the product to still be seen clearly, I hope that's not an HTML SEO problem. **What do you think, for users with diluted SEO or better SEO in this case? Our product pages are our most important pages in this industry. Thanks**
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
What would be the best way to translate my website for international seo?
I am planning on creating a multi language website that targets different countries and would like to know what would be the best way to translate my content from English to multiple different languages (French, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, etc.). I would hire a translator but doing so for all these different languages would be too costly. Using Google translate will leave me with at best a rough translation. What are my other options? Is there a website that can provide me a better translation? Would Fiver be a better/cheaper alternative? Thoughts?
Web Design | | Shawn1240 -
Does Using Magento With Multi Sites Affect SEO
We have a client who has 3 separate websites targeting the US, Australia, and the UK. Each of them has relevant ccTLD's such as: .com .com.au and .co.uk. Our client wants to use the Magento multi-site function so it combines all the stores (which are the exact same products) and merge it into one through Magento. These sites are all hosted in the US and had nothing to do with me haha! I understand Rand has mentioned on a video it would be best having the websites with ccTLD's hosted in that country (if budget permits), however in this case the budget doesn't permit us to go down that road. Has anyone any advice on this matter, has anyone did this before and had a lot of success with the SEO? At present there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it and opinions are varied and sometimes divided. Any help would be very much appreciated guys Thanks, Matt
Web Design | | HigherthanSEO0 -
Will A DHTML Overlay Or ThickBox Capturing Email Hurt SEO?
Some of our competitors use an overlay window on all their pages to sign a customer up for an email list (usually offering a coupon). Our questions is related to the impact on SEO the overlay might have. Does anyone have experience doing this and is this a "safe" thing to do related to SEO? Thanks...
Web Design | | onlineinitiatives0 -
SEO Friendly Image Swap Functionality Software
Anyone know of any software for this... I need a simple way to create SEO friendly Image Swap Functionality on multiple product pages of a static site. The idea is that customers can see different images within the product screen by clicking on thumbnails. For SEO purposes it is essential that: The rollover does not create a new URL when the product images are cycled The image needs to have an alt attribute (a different attribute set by the client for each product) As per: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tips-and-musthaves-for-your-ecommerce-platform Thanks in advance. Justin
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0