Does personalisation help SEO?

The more authority your content has, the higher your organic ranking, the more likelihood you'll see an increase in traffic and conversions.

Your personalised content enhances the user journey and the experience for the individual. It 'guides' users down the path to conversion. But how does personalisation impact SEO on said content?

Personalisation vs SEO: Things to consider

Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) all offer personalisation. But one in particular, Sitecore, has been at the forefront of this field for a very long time. Sitecore has always personalised content at the component level.

For example, visitors are shown a relevant hero image with a CTA that is served when the page is visited. This means the SEO of the original or base page isn't compromised. Nevertheless, it’s important to consider other factors when personalising content. Consider the implications of page speed, duplicate content and cloaking.

Page speed

Page speed is an important SEO factor. The quicker your pages load the more favourable search engines will be. If your web pages take an age to load then any potential visitors will bounce. We've all done it!

For example, Google recommends that a page load, or Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), should be no more than 2.5 seconds. Anything longer and your page is deemed too slow. This negatively impacts SEO.

You need to ensure personalised content doesn't clog load speed. Thankfully, Sitecore handles this. Using Sitecore CDP and Personalize together for instance, streamlines the whole personalisation process and it's is so advanced that there's no need to wait an eternity for pages to load.

Duplicate content

Google doesn't like duplicate content. Keeping the base pages optimised for relevance and their own keywords whilst changing modular content should help you avoid duplication.

Cloaking

There's also something called cloaking. Google's definition is: "Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected."

To avoid the duplicate and cloaking conundrum use canonical URLs where relevant. Canonicals URLs inform Google which URL is the preferred one in the case where multiple URLs may be returned with same content.

SEO worries? Not with Sitecore…

If your website is on the Sitecore platform then you shouldn't worry about a negative SEO impact on personalised pages. To reiterate, it's really important you plan accordingly on what content is needed to provide relevance, to meet visitor intent and to deliver a positive user experience.

Look at keyword relevance and difficulty. For example, if you want to rank for Sitecore Discover your target keywords must be relevant so your page can be found by search engines. Then, components in your base page in Sitecore can be changed based on the user's search query. Components like the hero and CTA could display relevant messaging to guide the user to conversion. You can also use geo-ip rules to change components based on geographical region.

Working with Codehouse

For over 15 years, we’ve been working with Sitecore. During that time we’ve created a lot of digital experiences for customers like Wyndham Vacation Rentals and The AA. 

We're also helping our customers get the very best from their SEO strategy. So if you’re considering Sitecore as your next DXP, and want expert guidance on SEO, get in touch with our experts.