Dynamic Content and SEO: Challenges and Best Practices

Macaroni and cheese, milk and cookies, Kermit and Miss Piggy — some things just work better together. Likewise, dynamic content and SEO can become a marketing powerhouse for your brand. 

More than two out of three companies actively invest in SEO for its effectiveness. Furthermore, companies that use dynamic content have doubled their return on investment. 

Imagine the results you can get when you put the two together! To get started with that, find out what these terms mean and how to avoid potential pitfalls.

What Is Dynamic Content and SEO?

Dynamic content is any information on a web page that changes because of some variable piece of data. Often, it happens because of the user’s behavior, interaction, or location (user-based), but it could involve other factors. For instance, the time of day or breaking news could affect the content (site-based). 

Another name for dynamic content is adaptive content. Its primary benefit is that visitors get a more engaging and personalized experience that keeps them coming back for more.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It refers to the set of activities you undertake to help your web pages appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

With good SEO, your content appears toward the top of the first page when a person searches for something that relates to your services. People are more likely to interact with your site and convert into customers if you are the first result or close to it. Together, dynamic content and SEO can make your brand much more visible and memorable.

What Is the Difference Between Static and Dynamic Content in SEO?

Static content is unaltered text, images, and video that stays the same on a webpage no matter who visits or what is happening. Dynamic content changes the page’s information, depending on the visitor or other factors, such as location and time of day. Either type of page can get excellent SEO results.

Good examples of dynamic web pages often show up on a weather forecaster’s site or a stock trading page. Each page usually updates with the latest information. For instance, the weather page will detect your location and send you the local weather and forecasts for the upcoming hours. 

As you can imagine, dynamic pages require more complex coding as they are constantly calling, retrieving, and displaying information. This dynamic content with SEO can be more engaging but requires more work and maintenance.

The advantages of static web pages are that they load quickly and are easy to create. However, they might not be as interesting as a dynamic web page, depending on the content.

Does Dynamic Content Affect SEO?

Yes, dynamic content can affect SEO for either good or bad. Only with careful practices can you ensure that dynamic content complements your SEO efforts.

How Is a Dynamic Website Good for SEO? 

A dynamic website often makes for a better user experience, which assists SEO. Interactive or responsive pages can draw more people to visit and revisit your site. The increase in traffic, time on site, and user engagement is one of the best things you can do for SEO.

What Risks Can Dynamic Content Present for SEO?

Dynamic content and SEO best practices aren’t always a match. This largely depends on how you create and maintain your web page. 

The primary issue is that you need to be sure that Google sees the right thing when it sends its bots to crawl your page to examine it. Specifically, the bot scrutinizes page quality, keywords, and page speed to determine where to rank it in results. Therefore, you have to watch out for the following issues:

• Duplications: Dynamic pages can produce different URL strings that are practically identical. For example, an eCommerce site can have two pages where the only difference is the color of an item for sale.
• Cloaking: The crawler might not see what your human visitors see which can make the bot think you’re trying to hide something or use sneaky SEO tactics. A search engine might tank your results or even ban your site.
• Keyword cannibalization: Dynamic content could result in multiple pages that target the same keyword, putting you in competition with yourself for rankings. As a result, a less important dynamic page could be stealing the shine from a page you want to rank higher.
• Load speed issues: Of course, dynamic pages take longer to load than static pages. Users will leave slow-loading pages, killing your time-on-site metrics. 

Only when you address all these areas will dynamic content and SEO work well together.

How Can You Maintain Good SEO for Dynamic Content? 

Certain best practices for dynamic content can ensure it supports your SEO. For starters, don’t add more dynamic elements than are necessary. It might feel exciting to add those elements, but don’t create more work for yourself if it isn’t really adding value to your site or brand.

Additionally, eliminate issues with cloaking by including static content that makes clear the page’s purpose. A great way to do this is to ensure titles and title tags with keywords are static. You can also put an FAQ at the bottom. This is great for dynamic product pages.

Use canonical tags to avoid keyword cannibalization and duplication. These tags tell the bot that another page is the original to rank. For instance, pages with different color items will point back to the main item page. 

Finally, avoid slow load times with tools and plugins that optimize speed or compress static elements to reduce page size.

Guidance Is Available for Staying on Top of Dynamic Content and SEO 

Strategies for combining dynamic content and SEO can lead to market dominance. However, executing them might be one more thing on your already overflowing plate. 

If you need a little extra help, talk to us at BKA. We’ll show you how our managed services for dynamic content and SEO can push your marketing to another level.