Small Front End - Large Back End

I was wondering how to perform my usual SEO and on page optimization with a site that has very few public pages. The rest of the site is behind a login. Inside there are 100's of pages with a lot of content. Does anyone have a recommendation for the front end optimization since the back end is inaccessible. The public pages are not filled with that much content and the content hardly changes.

Thanks for the help,

Zig

It is not possible to optimize for search engines content that can not be read by search enignes. Either pull some of the content out from behind the secure area, or work with the pages that are. Basically, you need to treat the password protected pages as though they do not exist, because to a search engine they do not and never will.

Some things to consider:
1. Why is the content password protected? If it is truly sensitive data, you would not want it indexed by search engines. If it is not, consider ways to make it viewable by SEs.

2. If the content is not sensitive, and you only have a single UID and PW (or a small number shared by many users) there are low security options that will stop 99% of users from seeing the content without logging in, but allow SEs to see it just fine. The easiest, lowest tech nd lowest security is by managing the security via JavaScript, hard coded into the page or an external script. It is a very Mickey Mouse solution, and should NOT be done where security is of any critical importance, but for places where it is just a "nice to have" it can work. spiders will ignore the JavaScript and go right through.

A slightly higher-tech way to do the same thing is to use PHP, ASP, Perl, etc. in the header of the page to require a login IF the client is IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc. and to let spiders right through.

Still, unless you have links to these pages, they won't rank well regardless.

There are many sites that hide content that can be displayed openly behind logins. It is like a secret club... so secret that the search engines will not find it.

We have password protection also, but only for truly proprietary product content access. All other content is on the frontend. I recommend strongly that you review your strategy and site structure.

Except for the ability for your paying customers to access what they paid for, almost all the rest of your content should be made available to the SEs. That content will likely also serve to attract more customers to register to get at your password protected section(s).

... then again, it may be a personal problem. (sorry, just couldn't resist)

i didi a double check at my butt..... anyways, if you only need 5 pages then optimize the junk out of those 5, easy enough.....

Gentleman,

Thanks for the replies. It looks like the focus will be on the front end.

I guess this one was open.
FogHorn Quote:
Originally Posted by zigity
Small Front End - Large Back End

... then again, it may be a personal problem. (sorry, just couldn't resist)

Zig

Zigity,

I suggest pulling out the first 100 words or so of each article and putting them in a publicly accessible section. You get two benefits with this approach: you let the search engines see the top of each article (which usually contains an introduction or summary, which are good for search), you also let users preview your articles and have a "sign up to see full article" teaser at the bottom of each page.

Actually, you can allow acces to Googlebot by IP address only (to prevent anyone spoofing googlebot) and not require a log in. This will allow Google to crawl all your members only pages and return SERPs for them but unless people are logged in (and presumably pay a fee?) they can't see it.

This is how many technical and research organisations work.

By hidding your content from the search engines you are losing out big time!

Optimise all pages as you would normally and then allow access to the search engine spiders by IP address only.

Be sure to set <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> on the pages, otherwise the content will be free to all via the Google cache.

Good point John, I overlooked that!