How to do SEO for web application?

Question

I have developed a website which is like a web application. A user must log-in to visit/view other pages.

I want the login page to be the only one found by Google. The SEO guidelines that I found online are more for blogs or websites which have many open pages.

I'm not sure how to proceed. A search for my website name on Google shows the description on the GoDaddy page stating "click here to find out how to purchase this domain name."

Answer 1

If your website requires users to login to access the content, then nothing beyond the log-in form will be accessible to Google and other search engines (unless you mistakenly expose it). They can't complete authentication, but you may want to consider a more restrictive approach.

In terms of the domain result in Google still showing the GoDaddy place-holder, if you've configured your website, domain, etc. correctly it's a matter of waiting. New sites with little or no backlinks can take time get get discovered/crawled/indexed and ranked.

There's some basic SEO pointers on Google's Webmaster Tools section, and I would recommend registering your site with Google Webmaster Tools to help identify any potential issues.

Answer 2

There's some good feedback here, let me just add some other ideas...

• If the old content of the homepage is still showing, it might still be on the server. Verify your site in Webmaster Tools and double-check that your hoster isn't doing something like a "frame" of your actual site.
• You can use "Fetch as Google" and "Submit to indexing" in Google Webmaster Tools to have the homepage updated faster when you're sure that it's working.
• Only the publicly-visible pages of your site will be findable in search. Make sure they count! Show examples, consider using blog posts, informational articles, or a publicly accessible help center.
• Depending on the type of site and your users, First Click Free might be an option too.

Answer 3

Fill it with actual content people are interested in and Google will show that. This is the best way. Just using the word 'consultancy' a lot of times will not help, nor will a pile of meaningless keywords.

However, behind the log-in should not be indexed. I would try adding content in front of that, talk about your work, the subject of your app, anything. Why not have a [your app] blog?

Cross-linking is another favourite, if people link to your site the google rankings will improve. But google is good at spotting this and black-listing systematic cross-linkers.

You could always pay google for a promoted record, but this requires budget, and most people automatically skip the paid results at the top of the page.

And the GoDaddy thing, this may be a simple question, but have you bought your domain name, if you put the name of your site into the browser, does it appear? It might be that the site is not, in fact online (It might be that it is, but I don't know this), in which case, no search engine will find it.

If your browser and google differ on that, then you just need to wait for the DNS to propogate and your site to get indexed.

Answer 4

Do SEO for the homepage and every page that is accessible before the login as Google can only crawl that.

Everything that is password protected is inaccessible to Google.

Your best bet is to create a promotional page (that contains the value proposition) for your application and do SEO for that page only.

You should also do a redirect to the promotional page when someone visits your application through a unique URL (that is accessible only if the visitor is logged in) so that you don't loose any pagerank.