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Ask HN: SEO for web apps

5 points by timae ↗ HN
Can anyone point me to a resource of good information for SEO as it specifically relates to a web app? Like a typical app, my site has a landing page which provides an overview of the site and allows you to login or sign-up, a "learn more" section with a more detailed write-up of what the site offers as well as FAQ and About Us pages. After that, its just the app. Aside from looking for a good resource for information (webpage, book) my questions are:

1. Is the landing page the only one I need to focus on for SEO purposes? (I'm thinking yes, because this is the page that will have all the linkbacks)

2. Should I use robots.txt to block the crawler from the URLs that lead directly to the app (which you need to login to use). Should I block anything else, like the images directory?

3. Should I try to point people to http://www.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or mysite.com? Should I try to pick the form that most of my linkbacks are in?

4. Is a Sitemap necessary for such a simple page structure?

btw, I've read this HN tread(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119986), however the site that seemed to come off best costs $100/month. Looking to learn and do this myself.

Thanks.

5 comments

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akronim
I'll take a quick stab at it: 1) hopefully that's landing pages. You don't have to worry about SEO on the internal pages that google can't see. 2) no, since I assume they just all redirect to the login page, and you want people to be able to find that i guess 3) pick one and 301 redirect to the other 4) Not if the pages can be found via links. Probably not that useful unless you have frequently updated content like a blog might.
timae
Thanks, your comments help. Landing page as in homepage (maybe I'm using the wrong terminology). Only one of those.
akronim
if you want to target more than one set of keywords then you probably want more than one landing page, each targeting a specific user group or keywords. The home page is more general.
jdowdell
How do you think desirable audience will likely search for your application?

(It's hard to get on that first page of result for some incidental bodytext that you may happen to have, particularly if it's loaded dynamically.)

A sitemap still seems good, because it lets you explicitly include those terms on which you think you can be competitive during a search.

But start with the user... what terms will they likely be using when they're seeking what you offer? and on which of those terms can you realistically compete?

jd/adobe