SEO for a dynamic site

**DanHorvat** · 1 July 2012, 2:14 pm

I need help, and I need it fast. Any advice is appreciated.

I'm not too sure how to get my dynamic site (the odds comparison one from the signature) indexed properly by search engines. On Google, my position is very low, and Bing didn't even index a single page.

I have used search engine friendly links, this is how they look like for a single match:
http://www.oddsnavigator.eu/match/Am...33170-all-24-1

and this is how they look like for a single tournament:
http://www.oddsnavigator.eu/league/U.../825444/all-24

Perhaps I should remove the /match and /league from the URL because then the match name (in the first example) is in the 4th folder, too far down to be considered important?

Each one of my 300.000 pages has a dynamically generated title, meta description and tags. But there are no text on those pages, perhaps I should add it?

Another issue are multiple pages with same content. For example, for a normal football match we will have around 120 pages with the same content (same match) but with different query strings because, for example, the visitor decided to sort the odds by juice, ascending.

How do I solve that? Should I remove the certain query strings in Google Webmaster Tools or use canonical URLs? In any case, I'd need all 120 pages for a single match to be treated as a single page, and a visitor should always land on the default one.

I repeat, any kind of advice or comment is appreciated.

**Smoking** · 1 July 2012, 2:24 pm

Just a quick thought on the match pages

They need content I dont think 1 line is no where near sufficient !

**DanHorvat** · 1 July 2012, 2:44 pm

Thanks. I added more text.

**thebookiesoffers** · 1 July 2012, 2:50 pm

you need content and your title on the homepage is too long

have a look how oddschecker do it

**baldidiot** · 2 July 2012, 5:48 am

I'd use canonical URL's to get rid of the duplicate content created by users sorting etc...

As for pages with low content, you can get away with it depending on the site. If the whole site is thousands of pages with hardly any content, it'll get binned pretty quickly. But if the site has 1,000 pages of long high quality articles and one page with a just sentence, that page can rank well.

Something else that can cause a problem is having too much formulaic text such as:

"Compare odds on XXX vs XXX at XXX at mysite.com. On this page you will find a comparison of the best odds for the upcoming game between XXX and XXX. Blah blah blah"

- This is exactly the kind of content google is going after and sites are getting killed for. Plus it's really easy to spot algorithmically.

Eg: Like you have on this page: http://www.oddsnavigator.eu/match/Am...33170-all-24-1

**DanHorvat** · 2 July 2012, 6:14 am

How exactly can I use canonical URLs? From what I read about it, I'm supposed to put this code:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://...Young%20Boys-Wil/1x2-ord-juice_a-1242357-all-1-1" />
in the <head> section on these pages:
http://...Young%20Boys-Wil/1x2-ord-juice_a-1242357-all-1-1
http://...Young%20Boys-Wil/ou-ord-juice_a-1242357-all-1-1
http://...Young%20Boys-Wil/ah-ord-juice_a-1242357-all-1-1
and although all three pages will open correctly, all three will be considered to be variations of the first one, which is also considered the main one in Google. If someone searches for Young Boys-Wil, he'll get 1 result from my site, that result will include the rank of all canonicalized pages, and when the user clicks, he'll go to the 1x2 version. Correct?

About the formulaic text - now I'm not sure what to do about it. I could program it so it's not repetitive, but as far as I know Google also penalizes article spinning.

So, you think I should remove the formulaic text before Google recognizes it and kills my site?

**baldidiot** · 2 July 2012, 6:55 am

Others may say differently, but all the sites I have that were hit in penguin used that kind of text (most of my sites are dynamic). It's kind of a pain because there isn't much you can do. What about having a feed of articles (title and very short intro) from your site that relate to the teams, venue or competition? Or if you don't have the content, can you pull it from yahoo or something? Not sure if that'll get the page seen as a scraper site though.

The problem you have with the way you've set your URLs up is that google can't tell it's just a parameter which makes it look even more like spun content or doorway pages. If you did it as:

this-is-the-event.php?order=whatever

Google can see the 'order' paramenter and deduce whats going on (to a point). You can also use webmaster tools to tell google to ignore that parameter, which does help a bit (although it's not a perfect solution as google only half believes whatever you say, it seems).

But yes, sticking the canonical URL in the head of each page in the manner you suggested will do the job more effectively, so long as it's implemented correctly.

**DanHorvat** · 2 July 2012, 7:38 am

I do have query strings but they're hidden, the cute URLs are a rewrite. The original looks like this:
http://www.oddsnavigator.eu/?display...port=&sort=0_d
and you can access each page either with a direct link with query strings, or with the cute URL.

So I am able to remove certain query strings on Google Webmaster Tools, though I agree with you Google is too stupid. I still didn't create a sitemap for all the matches in the database, nor the on-site sitemap. When I do, it should help Google a lot.

I can easily put some news on the site. Though making them relate to the match in question will be very tricky.

**beejack12** · 3 July 2012, 3:26 am

Target on your sites keywords it may be short and sophisticated.and do some work on off pafe technique to boost your site.

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