by Admin
by Zak Ramdani
by Zak Ramdani
http://www.mediative.com
Serving users different web experiences based on their location is not only acceptable, but desirable from an SEO perspective so long as this happens to cater to the user’s location. This type of content delivery is usually done on a country-level, where currencies, applicable taxes and laws can vary. Conversely, providing multiple site-wide experiences with drastic changes to available content within one country for the purpose of usability testing can be a cause for concern. Although IP based content delivery for the purposes of website usability testing may not hurt the site at all from an SEO perspective, there are associated risks that could include ranking demotion or being removed from Google’s index altogether, due to the following:
Cloaking Interpretation Risk:
Showing multiple sets of results on the same URL; this risk intensifies if site versions are being displayed based on user-agent.
Caching & Indexation Issues:
When multiple versions of a webpage are presented through IP based content delivery, Google tends to index the US version. If multiple versions of a page are presented within the US, Google may be confused as to which version to index, as the version Googlebot will see will be dependent on its IP address. As a result, we have no way to predict which version will be indexed by Google. This problem intensifies if this experiment goes beyond design, and deals with content availability. For example, version A contains 500 pages that are all currently indexed by Google, version B has 200 pages, with the other 300 still available and ranked in Google’s search results. For visitors located in the geographic region where the 300 pages no longer exist, clicking on a search result with no associated page will generate a 404.
Website Performance Issues:
Google looks at the overall health of a site, as well as the quality of the content as part of their ranking considerations; this relates to IP based content delivery in the following ways:
Pages that no longer exist that remain in Google’s index will generate a spike in 404’s. Although Google may not like to admit it, websites with high numbers of 404’s tend to correlate with low-quality websites. From our experience, Google uses this as a ranking signal.
Ultimately, Google’s mission is to provide their users with the highest quality results, as a result, they look closely at whatever aggregate engagement metrics they have access to in order to make this determination. This includes the return rate of visitors back to their SERP. Should a website have content that’s indexed in Google’s SERP, yet not available in their region, this could cause higher bounce rates, indicating low-quality content which could subsequently hurt rankings.
SEO Friendly Usability Testing
Proper A/B testing leverages multiple URL’s where webmasters can assign a canonical tag to the preferred landing page. Although multivariate testing can leverage a singular URL, content variations are minimal, and not representative of an entire website redesign.
About the Author
Zak has been helping companies gain online exposure for close to a decade. Constantly testing new tools and strategies, Zak welcomes change in this fast-paced industry. With a deep understanding of authority signals, analytics analysis, and site architecture optimization, Zak takes the success of his clients over their competitors personally. During his off-hours, Zak works at a local College and University teaching a wide variety of Business Computer Applications. Zak’s openness to change and ability to execute make him one of Mediative’s most well-rounded SEO experts.
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