Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?

[editabletext]

To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>,  often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name>

We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on  dupe content on those unique 300 pages.

My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content?

The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL?

Any best practices we should know about?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi there,

Not sure I have enough information to weigh in on the first part of your question - Google will index whatever it sees on the page. If you deliver the content to Google, then they index it. The problem comes when you deliver different content to different users. Try a tool like SEO Browser to see how googlebot views your site.

http://www.seo-browser.com/

To answer your second question, its often hard to rank near-duplicate pages for specific cities/states without running into massive duplicate content problems. Matt Cutts himself actually addressed this awhile back. He basically stated if you have multiple pages all targeting different locations, it's best to include a few lines of unique content on each page (I recommend the top) to make each unique.

“In addition to address and contact information, 2 or 3 sentences about what is unique to that location and they should be fine,” Source

But this technique would be very hard with only 300 product page. The alternative, stuffing these pages with city/state information for every combination possible, is not advised.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/on-page-optimization-to-rank-for-multiply-cities

So in the end, it's actually not hard to rank for city-state keywords without having it in the URL, but the information should be in the content or other places like the title tag or internal link structure - but to do this for 1000's of locations with only 300 pages without keyword stuffing is near impossible.

The best thing to do is figure out how to create unique content for every page you want to rank for, and take that route.

For example, I might create a "Seattle" page, create unique content for the top of the page, then list 50 or so products with the unique Seattle prices. (This is a rough strategy - you'd have to refine it greatly to work for your situation.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

[IainReloadMedia]

I see. To get the city-state pages indexed then they must have their own URL. If you can only access it via posting a form (assumed for using the search feature), the a search engine can't see it.

To get round this, you could put a links underneath the search box to popular searches. This will get them indexed.

Does that answer the questions?

Thanks

Iain - Reload

[editabletext]

Thanks for the reply. The city-state content wouldn't be driven by the URL, it would be driven by the city-state that the user searched for. ie if the person searched for <product><city><state>I would want our /product/ page to show up, and show them content in their local city state.</state></city></product>

[IainReloadMedia]

Hi Editable Text,

In short if you show Google a crawlable link to the content with the dynamic header/content, and the content is driven by the unique URL, yes it will index it.

As with any SEO/life question, there are a few t&c's with this.

1. The pages need to be unique enough not to be classed as duplicate content
2. Make sure it's intelligently linked internally
3. You have external links pointing deep into the site
4. You have a decent site architecture

To answer you second question, you'll need unique pages for each location, unless your content would be so thin, you'd need to group them. The URL doesn't have to include the keyword, but it's damn helpful if it does.

Hope that helps

Iain - Reload Media