Using PhP to Randomize Page Content - Good for SEO?

Hi all,

Since it's said that regularly updating a web page and having fresh content are two key things the search engine crawlers look for, I was wondering how many of you PhP programmers are using randomization scrips to "change up" certain parts of your site on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

I have a retail site, so it would be easy for me to randomly (or semi-randomly) rotate the index page content on a pretty consistent basis. Does anyone think this would help in any areas of SEO?

Is anyone using randomization in any other form on their website for the purpose of helping out with rankings? I'm curious.

Thanks for the input!

 

I think by asking this question you've answered it yourself. Happy Hunting!

 

Hi, my concern with this would be when somebody clicks the link in the search results - they might not be getting to the content that they came to the site for. But, as far as building a page for SEO, I guess that would impress the computer side of it. ?

 

Bad idea in my opinion. 1st, "fresh content" is a myth, other things are far more important.
Second, pages rank well for specific keywords. If the contents of your page is changing all the time, then it will have to rank for different keywords all the time. Any links to the page will lose value, all the search indexes will be changed on each visit and you aren't going to achieve anything.

 

I have tried this using random content, random titles, using a handful of keywords. The only thing the site ranked well for was the common misspellings of the keywords. The recent PR update I lost all may previous PR2 ranking and Google dropped 95% of my pages.... Not to sure if it will work to well anymore.

 

in this scenario someone can alert google that your site is fake and it is normal
when you rank better than your competitors they will go to your site and review the content then they will warn google that you are not a real one

 

i assume you want to random "certain" page content, not the WHOLE page content?

if so, yes, its a good idea.... however, use many versions of the changing content.
use the overall same keywords.
do not randomize "crappy" content.... as in don't randomize just to randomize

overall, the idea is good -- however you can easily mess up the execution of the idea.
so, do it right.

ps. fresh content is not a myth... why do you think google LOVES blogs so much?
its not because its static text.

 

I couldn't agree more.

 

Who told you that Google loves blogs? Have you tested yourself or you just repeat what few other "big names" are saying. A huge part of the results I find is old static pages, not blogs at all.

 

i dont think so, although it depends what, why and how you are randomizing.

 

This is an interesting topic. I have been a little concerned about this myself. On one of my websites - www.shmootcase.co.uk I have randomised the column of accommodations on the right hand side of the page. I would guess that this makes up for only a small percentage of any page overall and the vast majority of the content is fairly 'static' (using the term loosely). I'd be interested to here peoples opinions on whether a small amount of randomisation is a good thing or not.

 

In my opinion it's perfectly fine to have dynamic/randomized parts of content. Just don't expect the contents of these parts to rank well.

 

Just an idea ... why not combine the different content with Google Optimizer. Then you can track which content works better and produces better results and more goal conversions ...

 

Be very careful using this tactic as it will get your hard work devalued or even banned if caught.

 

why not archive you home page as a content page daily (or whatever)?
As long as they're linked to via a sitemap, chances are, Google will point
visitors to the right pages.

Just my Tuppence Worth

Glenn

 

Depends how you have been doing your offsite seo, if you have spent a lot of time optimising for certain things then having random/roating content might not make sense.

 

As with everything else in SEO (and life, now that was deep) you can do this in moderation ... I have been using this technique on several occasions, but I've only "randomized" texts like the welcome text, some instructions for users and so on. Some parts of the website changed every couple of days, other every few weeks ... so there was always something going on, but it looked completely natural.

And to reply to the discussion about Google's love for blogs ... Yes, Google does love blogs, especially as an addition to websites with more or less static content - I have tried that myself on numerous websites and the results were always impressive.

I hope this helps.