How to get user genreated reviews indexed properly?
-
We are currently working to improve the deployment of a review widget on our website. The widget was deployed about 18 months ago and all reviews are behind Java navigation. I have been working with our IT staff to get the reviews into an HTML page which will either live on the product page as a tab or will be a link from the product page.
Our IT staff has suggested leaving the Java navigation for users and creating separate HTML pages specifically for search engines. Based on my experience, this sounds like a bad idea, basically creating pages just for search engines that will not be use by site visitors, although the visitors will have access to the same content via the Java navigation.
Anyone care to comment on this? Is creating HTML pages specifically for search engines a bad idea? An acceptable idea?
-
They should be indexable on the same page. Reviews are very important to improve your rankings, and by creating two pages, you're essentially splitting your link juice. Plus, if your product information goes on those review pages, Google might look at it like duplicate content and consider both pages the same thing. I think it's always a bad idea to create separate pages for bots and people. If you must create two pages, you can use the canonical tag (if both pages populate the same info, minus reviews) to help clarify things. But your best choice for SEO is to have one page.
-
It's hard to tell what you mean by "java navigation". That could be a lot of different things, so I'll just say this:
Everything relevant to a particular topic on one page. A product, for example:
The pictures are all on that page, the description is on that page, and reviews are on that page, everything. You can use navigational aids like accordions, or tabs using javascript as long everything for that item is on one page. No asynchronous loading, or iframes. No mess, no fuss. It's all right there for customers or search engines to find. Masking your content to weed out search engines for customers is definitely a detrimental strategy.
Plus, why in the world can't they just include the reviews on the product page? I am confused at how that is difficult. I will NEVER use AJAX for loading mission-critical content. Even if it's just our twitter feed. I use it for sending and receiving data, and loading in components like notifications or non-critical functionality.
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
-
Paginated pages are being indexed?
I have lots of paginated pages which are being indexed. Should I add the noindex tag to page 2 onwards? The pages currently have previous and next tags in place. Page one also has a self-referencing canonical.
Technical SEO | | WTH0 -
What are best options for website built with navigation drop-down menus in JavaScript, to get those menus indexed by Google?
This concerns f5.com, a large website with navigation menus that drop down when hovered over. The sub nav items (example: “DDoS Protection”) are not cached by Google and therefore do not distribute internal links properly to help those sub-pages rank well. Best option naturally is to change the nav menus from JS to CSS but barring that, is there another option? Will Schema SiteNavigationElement work as an alternate?
Technical SEO | | CarlLarson0 -
Why is my site not being indexed?
Hi, I have performed a site:www.menshealthanswers.co.uk search on Google and none of the pages are being indexed. I do not have a "noindex" value on my robot tag This is what is in place: Any ideas? Jason
Technical SEO | | Jason_Marsh1230 -
Can't get Google to Index .pdf in wp-content folder
We created an indepth case study/survey for a legal client and can't get Google to crawl the PDF which is hosted on Wordpress in the wp-content folder. It is linked to heavily from nearly all pages of the site by a global sidebar. Am I missing something obvious as to why Google won't crawl this PDF? We can't get much value from it unless it gets indexed. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks! Here is the PDF itself:
Technical SEO | | inboundauthority
http://www.billbonebikelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Whitepaper-Drivers-vs-cyclists-Floridas-Struggle-to-share-the-road.pdf Here is the page it is linked from:
http://www.billbonebikelaw.com/resources/drivers-vs-cyclists-study/0 -
Modx revolution- getting around index.php vs. root duplicate content issue?
Basically, SEOMoz bots are flagging our index.php and root files as duplicate content of one another, therefore cutting the page authority of each. What we want to do is make the root the canonical preference over index.php. Ordinarily, we should be able to do this in the htaccess file. For some reason, as the site has been built into a cms using ModX Revolution, this does not seem to work. We've tried A TON of htaccess rewrite mods to resolve this issue to no avail. We have also tried revising our sitemap to include only the root address. Any ideas? We'll try most anything at this point. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | G2W0 -
Does server affect indexing speeds?
A bit of a strange question this one: I have a domain which, when on my Dutch server, can get new blog posts indexed and ranking in less than 10 mins using the pubsubshubbub plugin. However, I moved the blog and domain to a UK dedicated server and continued to post. Days later none of these posts were indexed. I then moved the domain back to the Dutch server to test this, I posted in the blog and once again, indexed and ranking in 20 mins or so. To cut a long and tedious story short; In a bid to be closer to my customers I moved the domain to a UK VPS three days back. I posted but no posts are indexed. Anyone else experienced anything like this? Generally I don't move domains back and forward so much but wanted to test this out. The Ducth server is a 16 core 24gb Direct Admin dedicated, the two UK servers were both running Cpanel. I understand that it would be best to host as close to possible to the customers but the hardship of getting posts indexed in the UK is becoming a problem. Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl1 -
Pages not indexed by Google
We recently deleted all the nofollow values on our website. (2 weeks ago) The number of pages indexed by google is the same as before? Do you have explanations for this? website : www.probikeshop.fr
Technical SEO | | Probikeshop0 -
Site not indexing correctly
I am trying to figure out what is going on with my site listings. Google is only displaying my title and url - no description. You can see it when you search for Franchises for Sale. The site is www.franchisesolutions.com. Why could this happen? Also I saw a big drop off in a handful of keyword rankings today. Could this be related?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0