SEO Tips for Data Feed Optimization and Dynamic Data

Performing search engine optimization for dynamically generated websites that use a database or feed that feature thousands and thousands of stock kept units (S.K.U’s), product brand/make or model numbers requires a different tact than optimizing a website for a phonetic keywords or key phrase.

Dealing with Dynamic Data and Duplication

Even though model numbers are technically “keywords”; they typically have a much lower threshold or barrier to entry than their digital counterparts which originate from the alphabet in the ASCII set, this means your SEO approach can often dictate who ranks or tanks as a result.

SEO Tactics to Differentiate your Data.

1.       Create topical areas in a website where relevance can pool and feed the other model numbers.

2.       Use breadcrumb navigation or intelligent server side includes (feed spiders the next model).

3.       Break away from boiler plate feed data provided by manufactures (unless you want to be eclipsed by them in the search engine result pages) – try using a spinner to massage the feed or create a mash up of multiple feeds.

4.       Map out a program and get a few good deep links to internal pages if applicable.

5.       Use an RSS broadcast and ping / echo technique to get feedback / links.

6.        Ensure that whenever possible you mirror the title, URL, H1 continuity in addition to mapping out at least 3 dynamically generated internal links to pages or categories which link to internal pages in the tree/ hierarchy.

7.       Minimize noise on templates, only have navigation elements that are necessary. More on template optimization here.

8.       Use html or xml sitemaps, but try to segment those sitemaps by category when possible and make sure they have noindex, follow in the meta commands (unless you want your sitemaps to eclipse your pages).

9.       Create a related search or brand related database table to pull similar makes, models or brand related data in the footer (which both serves as an internal linking mechanism and conversion tool for consumers). Think Amazon here!

10.   Create a proxy/segment of the site using a CMS to create topical posts on the category (such as an information base for brands or model types) which you can then use as spider-food for search engines and then feed the silos (the nested pages in the category) using ring fencing (linking in sequence from one page to the next) like a secondary server-side include that’s sole purpose is to channel additional link-flow into the site.

This is a great start and while there are dozens of methods, the ten above should provide a starting point to distinguish your data in search engines from your competitors.

The lower the threshold “in phrase match” in Google, the less ranking factor you require to push model numbers to the top of search engines.

Instead of keywords, the Eigen vector overlap from the mass amounts of indexed content being parsed by search engine spiders and compared in the index as a corpus (body of documents) combined with clean html or xhtml (free of coding obstructions), as much unique content as possible (to eclipse duplicate content filters) and a few deep links to the apex of the category is often enough to bury competitors when using dynamically driven data or feeds.

Without overstating the obvious, the distinguishing factor is your on page SEO approach and domain trust often determine the top 3 results instead of off page ranking factor from links.

Data Feed Optimization is greatly impacted by how the data is crawled, parsed and prioritized, so, if you haven’t structured your data for search engines and communicated which pages are more important than others (using site architecture and internal links), you can use the SEO tips above to get a fresh start.

Enjoy!