Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Log in, sign up, user registration and robots
-
Hi all,
We have an accommodation site that asks users only to register when they want to book a room, in the last step. Though this is the ideal situation when you have tons of users, nowadays we are having around 1500 - 2000 per day and making tests we found out that if we ask for a registration (simple, 1 click FB) we mail them all and through a good customer service we are increasing our sales.
That is why, we would like to ask users to register right after the home page ie Home/accommodation or and all the rest. I am not sure how can I make to make that content still visible to robots.
Will the authentication process block google crawling it? Maybe something we can do?We are not completely sure how to proceed so any tip would be appreciated.
Thank you all for answering.
-
For implementing early user registration without hindering SEO, consider using dynamic rendering to serve content to Google’s crawlers; this method can maintain visibility while capturing user details upfront. For more tailored strategies, consult with experts at First Growth Agency.
-
The registration process on most websites is pretty straightforward. You enter your email, you create a password, and then you are done with it. Also try instagram mod apk unlimited likes and followers.
-
-
-
Yes it is better to ask the users to register right after the homepage but it will take some time that is the main reason you should apply some different tactics.
-
Just to give you un update, our IT solved that with CSS. The code is visible but it appears a CSS login over that does not really allow you to see much more until you log in.
It is working.
-
Correct. If you have a wall Googlebot won't index it unless you make some sort of exception for it (and even then Google frowns on walled off content). SEM had great article on this talking about Google's rules for walled news content (may not apply to you but interesting nonetheless).
I would put your wall behind your content, not in front.
-
Thank you Highland for the answer.
Therefore, I understand that there is not any way for robots to pass where there autentification requirements. Right? Just to confirm. This is our main concern, we get 30% of our SEO results directly to rooms and we would not like to loose those.
We already made the A/B tests and check the conversion rates and though we know we are loosing some users and making bounce higher the sales rates are much higher (about 30%).
We are working to solve this as well improving the product and the site but that would be other completely different thing.Seems like making a decission where to ask to register is the real important thing then

-
You can go this route easily enough, it just requires a deliberate decision as to which is public and which is behind your login-wall. Put a different way, you're going to need some public pages that explain your site, how the process works, etc. Once you've established what is necessary from a user and SEO perspective, then you can wall off your content behind a login.
You also need to experiment some with your funnel. If you present your wall on the first page after the home page, is that going to drive conversions (registrations in this case) up or down? Maybe your users are reading 3-4 pages before registering. Where is the sweet spot? A-B test. Funnel test. Be careful that you don't go "Hey, registrations increased sales so we need everyone to register!" because you might hurt sales down the road if less people register.
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
-
How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?
I'm doing some log file analysis and need to run a reverse DNS check to ensure that I'm analysing logs from Google and not any imposters. Is there a command I can use in terminal to do this? If not, whats the best way to verify Googlebot? Thanks
Technical SEO | | daniel-brooks0 -
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my shop subdomain?
Hello Mozzers! Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer so here goes... Currently I have one robots.txt file hosted at https://www.mysitename.org.uk/robots.txt We host our shop on a separate subdomain https://shop.mysitename.org.uk Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my subdomain? (Some Google searches are telling me yes and some no and I've become awfully confused!
Technical SEO | | sjbridle0 -
Multiple robots.txt files on server
Hi! I have previously hired a developer to put up my site and noticed afterwards that he did not know much about SEO. This lead me to starting to learn myself and applying some changes step by step. One of the things I am currently doing is inserting sitemap reference in robots.txt file (which was not there before). But just now when I wanted to upload the file via FTP to my server I found multiple ones - in different sizes - and I dont know what to do with them? Can I remove them? I have downloaded and opened them and they seem to be 2 textfiles and 2 dupplicates. Names: robots.txt (original dupplicate)
Technical SEO | | mjukhud
robots.txt-Original (original)
robots.txt-NEW (other content)
robots.txt-Working (other content dupplicate) Would really appreciate help and expertise suggestions. Thanks!0 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Google insists robots.txt is blocking... but it isn't.
I recently launched a new website. During development, I'd enabled the option in WordPress to prevent search engines from indexing the site. When the site went public (over 24 hours ago), I cleared that option. At that point, I added a specific robots.txt file that only disallowed a couple directories of files. You can view the robots.txt at http://photogeardeals.com/robots.txt Google (via Webmaster tools) is insisting that my robots.txt file contains a "Disallow: /" on line 2 and that it's preventing Google from indexing the site and preventing me from submitting a sitemap. These errors are showing both in the sitemap section of Webmaster tools as well as the Blocked URLs section. Bing's webmaster tools are able to read the site and sitemap just fine. Any idea why Google insists I'm disallowing everything even after telling it to re-fetch?
Technical SEO | | ahockley0 -
Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow
Hi Mozzers! We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter. We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming. But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems. What could be the reason? Best regards, Martin
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark0