Filter Content By State Selection and SEO Consideratoins

[Liamis]

I have an insurance client that is represented in three states. They need to present different information to users by state identification. They prefer to have one page with all the information and then present the information relevant to the state by the users selection from a pop up window. Spiders will be able to index all the content. Users will only see the content based on their selection.

So, I wanted to ask the Moz community what SEO implication could this have? The information available on the web is very thin with this situation so really appreciate any guidance that can be given...thanks,

[terentyev]

@liamis
As a rule of thumb, it is better to have one strong page, instead of 3 similar pages that can be treated by Google as duplicates. So, it seems that you're making the right decision. Regarding popup - really depends on this popup implementation.

In general, Google dislikes popups, especially if they are leading into a new window. Also, consider is the behavior of this popup on mobile: it may result in weaker CLS score and failed Core Web Vitals, which will affect the rankings. And even worse, you probably will have two popups - one for cookie consent and the second - for state-relevant information.

My advice - try to avoid popups, and find another way to display the state-specific information. There are probably many options: use a GET parameter ?state=xx and/or use geotargeting, and then mark this parameter as "specifies page content" in Google Search Console. Or use a drop down menu on the top to display state-related info. Or even use three different URLs and specify one of them as canonical, so that Google will not treat these pages as duplicates.