How do I optimize pages for content that changes everyday?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

I run daily and weekend horoscopes on my site, the daily horoscopes are changing every day for obvious reasons, and the weekend horoscopes change every weekend.

However, I'm stuck in how the pages need to be structured.  I also don't know how I should go about creating title tags and meta tags for content that changes daily.  Each daily and weekend entry creates a new page.

As you can see here http://bit.ly/1FV6x0y you can see todays horoscope.  Since our weekend horoscopes cover Friday Sat and Sunday, there is no daily for Friday, so it shows duplicate pages across Friday, Sat and sunday.  If you click on today, tomorrow and weekend all pages showing are duplicate and this will happen for each star sign from Fri, Sat Sun.  My question is, will I be penalized doing this? Even if the content changes?

How can I optimize the Title Tags and Meta Tags for pages that are constantly changing?

I'm really stuck on this one and would appreciate some feedback into this tricky beast.

Thanks in advance

[WebElaine]

Since it doesn't sound feasible to create new titles and meta descriptions by hand every time, I would come up with something automatic that's date-based. For example, your title could be "6/11/2015 Daily Horoscope for Cancer." Meta descriptions will be harder - if you're using something like WordPress with Yoast's SEO plugin, you could have it auto-create the meta description using the first line of your actual content. I'm sure you could find or create a similar auto-functionality if you're using a different platform. That way you aren't doing anything by hand, yet you have a unique title and helpful meta description for each page on the site.

On a related note, I noticed the horoscopes for all the other signs actually appear on the same page, just in a modal, when you click on them. This may be working against you because you have all the signs' content on multiple pages. I would try to find a way to keep only each sign's content on its page and link off to the other signs' individual pages for people who want to view multiple signs. That should really reinforce to crawlers that each page has unique content.

[edward-may]

Hi RedSweater,

Thanks for your in-depth response

Thats a great idea about the automatic date based title tags like the example you gave.  Would it be wise to take a look at what my competitors are using?  I can't figure out how they have set themselves up for this part.

My system was custom built - when you say this:

On a related note, I noticed the horoscopes for all the other signs actually appear on the same page, just in a modal, when you click on them.

This may be working against you because you have all the signs' content on multiple pages.

Would this create a duplicate content situation? Is that what you mean in terms of working against me?

I would try to find a way to keep only each sign's content on its page and link off to the other signs' individual pages for people who want to view multiple signs. That should really reinforce to crawlers that each page has unique content.

The reason why we did it like that is most people who are viewing their horoscopes like to view their partners, friends or family horoscopes as well.  Would you be able to elaborate on this?  I have looked into my competitors and can't quiet see how they have done this.

I can provide you a link to competitors horoscope pages?

I would love to hear your feedback on this,

Thanks so much

Justin

[WebElaine]

This post is deleted!

[WebElaine]

Yes - duplicate content is exactly what I mean. If you're a human visitor, it's a good way to be able to look at multiple signs quickly. I do this too - I always look at all the signs for my family. But if you're a search engine, on each sign's page, you see the full text for all the signs, so it looks like there are 12 pages with almost exactly the same content. Yes, it would be a good idea to look at competitors' sites and see how they handle it. One option might be to have each page with only that one sign's content on it, and use AJAX to pull in each additional sign - so visitors would see exactly what they're seeing now, and be able to immediately click another sign and see that horoscope, but because spiders typically don't see much content that is pulled in by JavaScript, they would see 12 unique pages to index. It looks like this competitor is doing it this way: http://astrostyle.com/daily-horoscopes/cancer-daily-horoscope/

Another question I might ask is, why are you archiving all the daily horoscopes? Are you seeing visitors to old horoscopes, or are you holding onto them for your own records? You may have visitors looking at them, and if so, keep archiving as you go. But if you're not getting much traffic to them, I would suggest considering keeping your own backup copies offline. That way, you could have a permanent "Daily Cancer" page with a more refined meta description that ever changes, and every day you just go in and edit that sign. Same for all the other signs, and same for the weekly sign pages. Anytime people link to these pages, they would keep that value - and I think that might help your rankings. Right now, with every horoscope being on its own separate daily page, say 2 people share that link on Facebook. Those links go straight to say the Cancer horoscope for June 1, 2015. That means they're kind of frozen in time. If instead you had a "Daily Cancer" page and they linked there, and then a week later they shared it again because they liked the new horoscope, you'd have 4 incoming links to the same page.

[edward-may]

Hey RedSweater,

Thanks for your in-depth response.

So firstly I wanted to ask with regard to the pop up modals for each star sign are you saying if we use the AJAX instead of the javascript to pull in each additional sign like you were saying would this be a better way to optimize the page for spiders to see, also how we currently have them creates the duplicate content effect?

Another question I might ask is, why are you archiving all the daily horoscopes? Are you seeing visitors to old horoscopes, or are you holding onto them for your own records?

No, we are not holding them for any records at all, not that I see or know if there is any benefit in doing so.  We currently do keep backup copies offline.

That way, you could have a permanent "Daily Cancer" page with a more refined meta description that ever changes, and every day you just go in and edit that sign. Same for all the other signs, and same for the weekly sign pages. Anytime people link to these pages, they would keep that value - and I think that might help your rankings.

Right now, with every horoscope being on its own separate daily page, say 2 people share that link on Facebook. Those links go straight to say the Cancer horoscope for June 1, 2015. That means they're kind of frozen in time. If instead you had a "Daily Cancer" page and they linked there, and then a week later they shared it again because they liked the new horoscope, you'd have 4 incoming links to the same page.

I think I see what your saying now: So if I'm correct in my understanding I can create a separate page for each star sign, and every day while updating the dailies I can go in and replace the old with the new this way the links are staying the same etc the only thing I would be tweaking is the meta tags des now and again and the content for each star sign.

Is that correct?

Thanks for you in-depth look into it really appreciate it.

Justin