Serving Content Specific To The Searched Phrase, Any negative SEO implications? Options

[scouseflip]

Hi all, hope you can help... and that this is posted in the correct forum! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/crossfingers.gif)

I built a site approx 18 months ago promoting a specific product range (Conservatory Dining Furniture) that my employer introduced as an add on to the core product range (Conservatory Furniture). Since creating I have tweaked it so that the site ranks well and converts well for keywords around both of these area's so no problems there.

However, I recently noticed traffic coming through from more generic 'Dining Furniture' related keywords - there is a good amount iof additional volume I could potentially benefit from with these phrases - even though the core offering for the company is conservatory furniture/conservatory dining furniture, there is no reason why our Dining ranges would not be suitable for use in the home as well as the conservatory and this would potentially be new/additional business for us if I can make it work.

The problem is that the homepage is not geared towards dining furniture in general - it is geared more towards enticing the visitors who have searched either for conservatory dining furniture or conservatory furniture in general. As such I am not converting the Dining Furniture visitors.

To address this I have coded for different content to be served depedant upon the keywords that have been searched - i.e. if they search for "dining furniture", the messages are more about Dining in the home rather than the conservatory (otherwise the normal content will be served).

I have done this through looking at the HTTP_REFERER details - if its a google search containing the parameters that suggest the visitor searched for 'Dining Furniture', the alternative content is served. There are no redirects involved, it's all on the same page and only one version of the content will be served at any one time (i.e. nothing will appear in the source code that isn't visible to the eye).

As I understand it, Google would never even see the alternative content, unless it is crawling its own search results (do they do that??) - But is there any reason why this approach could have a negative impact from and SEO point of view?

Thanks in advance!

[rolf]

I can't give you anything definitive, but my opinion is that at the very least you're sailing pretty close to the wind.

It's an interesting question. I can see that what you're suggesting would probably benefit both the visitor and yourselves, so everyone wins, however, you are technically breaking the rule about serving one thing to spiders and another to visitors - albeit only some of your visitors.

Personally, I wouldn't take the risk unless someone here can verify that this is OK somehow.

That said, I wonder if there is a middle way? My immediate thought is to have a hidden div (that becomes visible when someone arrives via the search term) that basically says "you searched for x, this page is about y - would you like to see our page about x?"

[scouseflip]

Thanks Rolf, that's not a bad idea at all! If I need to make the compromise then that's how I will handle it...

I hoped it would not be a problem as my aim is not to influence rankings or to mislead anyone - simply to boost conversions by showing the visitors the products we have to offer with the focus taken away from the niche Conservatory Furnishing market, into the more generic (and much bigger!) Dining Furniture market. Of course automated processes will not nessecerily know that so I need to tread carefully - last thing I want is to undo all the efforts I've put into it over the last 18 months!!

If anyone can confirm or deny that I'm pushing my luck with this it'd be much appreciated... I actually implemented the change today (it's gonna be at least a week before Googlebot visits again so I guess I'll be okay until then anyway). I'll have to backtrack if its too much of a risk...!

[Hyperformance]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/yourock.gif)

Excellent suggestions and advice Rolf!

[Randy]

I think Rolf's suggestion is a good one.

If the entire content of the page was changing based upon the search phrase used and showing up in the referrer info, I'd be more than a tad worried. Whether it's for the ultimate benefit of users or not would be something very difficult for the search engines to tell. And first thought, if they ever discovered it, might be simply that you're cloaking content.

On the other hand by following Rolf's suggestion and making a hidden div layer visible that just contains a sentence or two in order to direct those users to a better location shouldn't be much of a problem. Who knows, if you make it transparent (eg the bots can see it in your html code) you might even end up with your Dining Furniture page starting to rank for that page. If you're really lucky, you'll get both to show up in the SERPs.

[scouseflip]

Thanks all, I'll get onto it today.

Thought as a compromise I would do as you say, including an extra div that ciontains the extra copy and also will have my main banner image change ependant upon the seacrhed phrase - that way I should still keep some of the immediate visual impact of the page...

Thanks for your advice!

[nethy]

A - Are you sure that they are actually landing on you home page?
B - Do you have any pages that are more relevant to those keywords then the home page?
C - I don't think you need to be all that worried about having the 'most relevant' content on the actual landing page.
Your content doesn't sound that far off & if you actually have a link to the right place (containing keywords similar to those that they have just searched), prominently, you'll probably get most of them clicking through. You don't actually have to change the page itself if you take Rolf's suggestion and simply have a relevant page.

I also don't see a problem with promoting this page on the home page. The most useful homepages very often simply direct visitors to the content. If you have this page & you have visitors that you believe will be interested in it, why not 'advertise' it? If it's an ecommerce or catalouge style site you could have a page (or category) made up of those products relevant to that segement of visitors.
Up to you though if you think this can be done without diluting your home page's focus.

Effectively you would be adding content that anyone can access rather then content that is selectively shown to visitors. But it's adding content either way.

This post has been edited by nethy: Jun 26 2008, 03:18 AM

[scouseflip]

Hi Nethy

The page is about dining furniture, but a specifically it is about cane / rattan dining furniture which we market to conservatory owners normally. The homepage has started ranking much better for the generic term 'dining furniture', because it has been optimised for 'conservatory dining furniture', 'cane dining furniture' etc.

Problem I have had is that the 'conservatory' focus of the page as it stood was (I think!) putting the more generic 'dining furniture' visitors off, so I want to capitalise on the additional traffic without diluting the impact of the page for the specific 'conservatory dining furniture' visitor (I had to work a lot on the homepage to get the conversions up from where they were earlier this year - around 1.5 - 2% - to where they are now - around 5 - 5.5% - so I don't want to undo that work).

Basically I am still only promoting one product range, but want to alter the focus to make show it off in a way that would appeal to a broader range of people.

All:

I've kind of put Rolf's suggestion in place now but hoped to check that I've handled it in a sensible way. So far I have not created the page specific to generic Dining Furniture, just kept the links going to the brochure reqest page until I can get the new page set up.

This is how I have gone about it:

CODE

<%
                If Session("dinMsg") = "dinMsgYes" Then
                Response.Write("<p><a href='brochure.aspx'><img border='0' src='images/brochure6.jpg' alt='Dining Furniture Brochure - Click Here' /></a></p><div style='display:inline;'")
                Else
                Response.Write("<p><a href='brochure.aspx'><img border='0' src='images/brochure.jpg' alt='Conservatory Dining Furniture Brochure - Click Here' /></a></p><div style='display:none;'")
                End If
            %>
            
                <p><strong>
                    The finest quality cane and rattan dining furniture from [brand name]
                    <br/><a href="brochure.aspx">REQUEST YOUR DINING BROCHURE HERE AND SEE FOR YOURSELF!</a>
                </strong></p>
                <p>[brand name] specialise in cane and rattan dining furniture, ideal for the home or the conservatory.</p>
                <p>Cane / rattan are fantastic materials for crafting furniture of any description. Lightwieght and yet durable, cane furniture can be easily moved around, so it can be stored out of the way when not in use, or made into the center piece of your dining room when you have family or friends around to visit.</p>
            </div>

...so that the div is always written, but is only visible for the correct serach term. Also so that the most appropriate image is shown to the visitor.

I'm a little bit concerned as this actually feels more like I am pushing my luck because I am serving the addiional content, but hiding it from the user unless they have searched a certain thing. Would this not be seen as dodgy? I know I am not doing this for the benefit of the search engine - in fact the hidden content adds very little in the way of SEO fodder to the page - but would googlebot be able to recognise this?

[rolf]

I'm a little bit concerned as this actually feels more like I am pushing my luck because I am serving the addiional content, but hiding it from the user unless they have searched a certain thing.

To me this seems parralell to having dropdown menus, albeit with a different trigger mechanism. All the content is visible to the spiders and certain content becomes visible to certain visitors at an appropriate time, so it seems OK to me. Maybe a work around would be to have a subtle link on the page somewhare that also reveals the div?

Excellent suggestions and advice Rolf!

I think Rolf's suggestion is a good one.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rap.gif) Don't clap, just throw money (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

[don h]

I was contemplating doing this but except instead of just one or two sentences also show them a few sample products along with some brief descriptions using AJAX.

I've been a little scared to try it though, it would be nice if Google disambiguated their description of cloaking, as in what is acceptable and what isn't. Showing some additional relevant content based on their search query or IP and keeping the rest of the page the same I would think would be o.k and not deceptive or black-hat. The home page doesn't always make a great landing page and would be nice to utilize some techniques to allow for it to be without worrying about getting penalized for it.

As long as the content you show is relevant to the query and for the benefit of the end-user and you're not using the content to hide text to the user in an attempt to gain a ranking advantage on the engines I'd think it would be fine and Google would be fine with it, but who knows, with all this ambiguity. And how would Y! and MSN handle it. I guess If you want great landing pages then you must use their ad services.