I have a website for a company which is accessed by two distinct set of customers - Homeowners and Housebuilders.
The website is set up in two sections - one for each of these set of customers.
When someone accesses the website for the first time they have to choose whether they want to access the homeowner or the housebuilder section.
At the moment when they hit the homepage, they are redirected to another page where they click on a button to make their selection, before being taken to the appropriate page.
My concern is that this is affecting the SEO of the website.
I thought about replacing the selection page with a modal on the homepage but I understand that Google isn’t keen on modals unless there is a delay in it appearing, which wouldn’t really suit my need as I don’t want housebuilders to access the homeowners page and vice versa.
Why? Does the choice provide any real benefit other than setting a cookie which you’re leveraging to forward the user later? If not, then set the cookie when they make their choice of pages and remove the forced choice.
The reason is that the content is vastly different for homeowners and housebuilders.
As the initial redirect is to another url, I just wanted to ensure that it didn’t harm the SEO of the home page.
Another option I thought of was actually hiding the home page content using css and just displaying the choice of homeowners / housebuilders on first visit to the website. If they chose homeowners the content would be displayed, if housebuilders, they would be redirected.
The user goes to the homepage (which is the homepage for homeowners) and if it is their first visit, they are taken to a page where they choose the homeowners or housebuilders part of the site
The user goes to the homepage and if it is their first visit, a modal asks them to choose the homeowners or housebuilders part of the site. The problem with this is that from what I have read, Google now prefers modals to have a delay coded in, which wouldn’t work well for the purposes of the website as everyone would initially see all the homepage content.
The user goes to the homepage and if it is their first visit, they only see the content that asks them to choose the homeowners or housebuilders part of the site (the rest of the content on the page is hidden).
What I need to know is what is the best option from an SEO point of view.
makes note “Being a housebuilder means I cannot own a home…”
While that comment may seem flippant, it does sort of lend itself to the options you list… most housebuilders will be homeowners; most homeowners will not be housebuilders. I would load the homeowner content by default, and let the modal deload and reload the housebuilder content if selected.
Yes, that was the way I was going. Although on the website, the housebuilders are called ‘Contracts’.
So, would you say a modal is better than hiding the content?
Just wondering because of Google’s preference for a modal not to be shown immediately on page load.