Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
John Michaloudis Posted September 1, 2023 Posted September 1, 2023 Hello, We have our forum installed and working. Currently, this is not being indexed by Google, because you have to be logged in in order to see the content. Is there a way to allow the tool to show the content to search crawlers, but not to clients? This technique is called "content cloaking" and it's allowed by Google, among others. Please advise for any possibilities to do this. Here is an explanation of this technique: https://rockcontent.com/blog/cloaking-in-seo/ Thank you in advance!
Jim M Posted September 1, 2023 Posted September 1, 2023 There is no way via the software to perform this. The guest group is how bots would access your community.
opentype Posted September 2, 2023 Posted September 2, 2023 10 hours ago, John Michaloudis said: This technique is called "content cloaking" and it's allowed by Google, among others. … https://rockcontent.com/blog/cloaking-in-seo/ Have you read the article you linked? It explains in details why should NOT do it. Quote If caught, a website can be heavily penalized by Google, if not banned entirely. Nathan Explosion, Jim M, Claudia999 and 2 others 5
PPlanet Posted September 3, 2023 Posted September 3, 2023 @John Michaloudis I believe that cloaking could become a problem when the content actually differs. Eg, a blog about sexual health for search engines, instead of a list of viagra and similar products for sale for whoever is logged in. Not so much when you have a paywall like many online newspapers do, where the search engine accesses the same content as a subscribed or logged in user, as opposite to what a guest would see (generally a message inviting him to subscribe). A way of achieving the same with IPS, would be to create a group that you could name, "search engines", "bots", "crawlers:, etc. and you give it reading/downloading privileges akin to what logged in members have to read the topics. Then you could install this plugin and set it up: DawPi 1
PPlanet Posted September 3, 2023 Posted September 3, 2023 Also, by using Nathan's plugin linked above (which has a lot of flexibility per type of content too). AlexWebsites 1
John Michaloudis Posted September 4, 2023 Author Posted September 4, 2023 Thank you very much for your responses! Quote Have you read the article you linked? It explains in details why should NOT do it. I did read it. The idea is, like PPlanet mentioned, to set it as a paywall. That would be the case when you would like the content to be indexed. Thanks for the plugins and suggestions, I will debate this with my team and see what's best for us.
Dll Posted September 5, 2023 Posted September 5, 2023 I'd recommend having a read of this - Google is specific in there that you shouldn't be using cloaking for paywalled content, and that you should be using structured data for it instead. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/flexible-sampling https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/paywalled-content PPlanet, opentype and John Michaloudis 1 2
PPlanet Posted September 5, 2023 Posted September 5, 2023 Thanks @Dll, that's useful to know. Does anyone know how to implement that on an IPS community?
Marc Posted September 6, 2023 Posted September 6, 2023 10 hours ago, PPlanet said: Thanks @Dll, that's useful to know. Does anyone know how to implement that on an IPS community? The only real way of splitting off permissions for one group in relation to another is via permissions PPlanet 1
PPlanet Posted September 6, 2023 Posted September 6, 2023 4 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said: The only real way of splitting off permissions for one group in relation to another is via permissions Yes, that's what I've always done. The problem begins if you have a paywall (like I do), and different areas, some visible by guests, others only to members, etc. and you want to follow these Google instructions. I thought there maybe was a way of editing templates to incorporate Google's instructions. Cheers.
John Michaloudis Posted September 13, 2023 Author Posted September 13, 2023 On 9/5/2023 at 4:29 AM, Dll said: I'd recommend having a read of this - Google is specific in there that you shouldn't be using cloaking for paywalled content, and that you should be using structured data for it instead. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/flexible-sampling https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/paywalled-content Thanks! I got confused by the terms, but this structured data for paywalled content is what I really meant. But it seems that there is no way to edit the templates to incorporate Google's instructions, as @PPlanet mentioned.
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