No more SEO worries for dynamic content?
By Mike Moran. Filed in Organic Search |Tags: Flash, Google, Googlebot, JavaScript, Search engine optimization
Image via Wikipedia
If you care about how your site is found in organic search, you must spend some of your time thinking about search engine optimization (SEO). In the olden days (2005), certain kinds of content had no shot of showing up in the search index (and thus, could never be found). But in recent years, more and more dynamic content is showing up in Google’s search index, as Google makes its spider smarter and smarter. So, now there’s nothing to worry about with dynamic content, right? Not quite.
I don’t want to downplay the amazing strides that have been made by the Googlebot. Google has worked tirelessly with Adobe to make Flash content indexable. If it is a Flash video, there isn’t much text to index, but many Flash experiences are full of text and Google can index a lot more of it than ever before.
Similarly, dynamic content generated from databases is indexed better than it once was, so it is less important to hide dynamic URLs than in years past.
And then there was the tweet heard round the SEO world in November, when Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that Facebook comments are now being indexed. That might sound like a small thing, but SEO gurus know that it is one more step in Google’s road to conquering a very difficult problem: understanding everything a developer can do with JavaScript. Just as a browser contains a JavaScript interpreter to render pages correctly, now Google’s spider contains some of that ability. Already, some are wondering how to take advantage of the new smarter Googlebot.
But it’s not smart to count on any of this dynamic content being indexed, for a few reasons:
- Better ain’t necessarily good. Sure it works better than it did, but if it omits any of your content, you’re losing something. By using tried-and-true techniques that avoid dynamic content, all of your content gets indexed, which still seems like the way to go.
- Google ain’t the only search engine. Sure, it’s nice that the Googlebot is getting so smart, but Bing runs 30% of U.S. searches and many other search engines grab market share around the world. Why hide your content from them?
- The negative effects can be bigger than you think. When the spider fails to identify dynamic content, you might lose a lot more than a few words on a page. If that content contains links, the spider might not see whole pages on your site, and whatever pages THEY link to.
So, I’m a technical guy, and I really love to see the spiders getting smarter. It would be great if any Web page that can be rendered properly in a browser could be crawled and indexed by all search engines. It would make SEO a lot simpler and would allow us to concentrate on content rather than technical mumbo-jumbo.
But we’re not there yet. So, make sure that you know what the spiders see (all of them) before you employ lots of dynamic content techniques.
Friday, February 10th 2012 at 11:11 am |
With the right CMS, dynamic content isn’t a big fear. Good coders are able to make sure Google can crawl your page effectively, and you can still rank well for relevant keywords.
Unfortunately, most web designers don’t put as much effort into the technical side of things.
Good post and we look forward to more.
Thursday, August 30th 2012 at 3:09 am |
Think your better creating a main holding page, and creating multiple link pages for the dynamic content, in my experience a new site with just a couple of dynamic pages has almost no chance of a decent showing in google.
Thursday, August 30th 2012 at 8:07 am |
Thanks for the comment, Steve. It’s always better to avoid these problems completely, as you say, but the search engines are improving their crawling of dynamic content, so it isn’t as bad as it once was. If your dynamic content renders rapidly and looks like static content (a well-crafted WordPress site is a good example) will work fine. The real question for people is whether they want to take a chance with something that looks a lot more dynamic than that. I tend not to.
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 8:59 am |
please answer my ne question,
Is it possible if i want hide som part(content) of my page to searh engine ?
i.e If i want google not viwe our page we use nofollow right.
But i want make available my page for google but some of its content not. is it possible?
i hope you understand what i wana ask.
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 9:06 am |
Why are you trying to hide content, Rahul?
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 9:10 am |
because i am creating a online test application. and 50% of my questions are copy from other website(with their permission) and 50% my original. But as i know if google find duplicate content then he can banned my all site or something bad with my website. and its ranking can b flush. so help me.
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 9:13 am |
I think if you use the same URL for all variations, it should work for you. I think Google Website Optimizer handles this and most other tools do also.
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 9:13 am |
sorry question was uncomplete. when tsest statr wuestion will selected automatically. so i want show only original contenet which will not harmful for my website ranking.
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 9:15 am |
i don’t understand. you mean i can use duplicate content also?(i am talking about dynamic page).
Wednesday, January 9th 2013 at 12:25 pm |
If you use the same URL for all variations, it isn’t duplicate content.
Sunday, February 10th 2013 at 10:34 pm |
Dear Mike, I really need your help and suggestion on dynamic webpage crawling and indexing. We have some thousand dynamic service pages all the pages have been optimized and we have made it SEO friendly but still none of the pages are getting indexed in Google or Bing. Here is one of the dynamic page http://www.infocheckpoint.com/companies/industry/agricultural-production-crops/01.html please check the page and suggest me any issue with the page. Pattern of All other dynamic pages are same.
Monday, February 11th 2013 at 6:49 am |
I took a quick look and nothing jumped out at me, so it might make more sense to take this offline–my e-mail address is mike at mikemoran.com–good luck.