We have a new Sexual advice and forum site with an announced launched date of September 1, Your Number One Resource for Sexual Advice - Ask Uncle Terry!. While the site is not pornographic it has adult material on it so we have used a warning page. When I went to the AdWords “Keyword Tool” and checked for site-related keywords, the site indexed the warning page. When I clicked the button “Include other pages on my site linked from this url,” it listed about 7 irrelevant suggestions from the first page. Since all other pages are linked from this first page and not from the warning page, no other pages were indexed. (I apologize if I am making this confusing.) My question, how do we keep the warning page from being considered our index page? Will this warning page make it more difficult for the search engines to index our many pages when they finally get around to it? The person building the site for me seems to be doing a very good job, but on this, their suggestion was to link between two domains with one of them the warning page. I am sure there must be a cleaner way. Your suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

how do we keep the warning page from being considered our index page?

You can't, Because it is your index page.

Will this warning page make it more difficult for the search engines to index our many pages when they finally get around to it?

Not if you have spiderable links on that page that lead to the rest of your content.

Yeah that page is your index page, but you can try to get links to deeper pages in your site. It's probably a catch 22 since you don't want people getting to deeper pages without going through the warning page, but search spiders will need to get those other pages for them to be indexed.

How is the warning page set up. Are there just two text links. One to enter the rest of the site and one to leave the site? If there's a simple text link to enter the site search spiders should be able to get to those other pages through that link. You might want to take them to a single page beyond that warning page that acts as a home page and maybe include a sitemap to other pages on your site from that secondary home page.

With Google you can try submitting to the Google Sitemap program which gives Google a list of all or most of your pages if your site has issues getting spidered and indexed.

Originally Posted by vangogh

How is the warning page set up. Are there just two text links. One to enter the rest of the site and one to leave the site? \

Yes, there are two links; one to enter our adult advice site and the exit site takes you to a Planned Parenthood site.

While my site could be set up without a warning page like most other sexual advice sites, I think the warning page is the appropriate thing to do. I am troubled though for we are putting a fortune in time and money into developing the site and we really need to optimize the site for search engines.

One person has suggested hiding the information from the warning page on the first page. Is this a viable solution?

Hiding the information probably isn't a good idea, it's kind of a 'black hat' tactic that search engines don't like.

Another suggestion -- instead of a warning only page, you might consider an intro page with non-explicit content in it that contains your warning when linking to the more explicit content. This gets the warning to an internal page rather than being your index page and gives you indexable content with the needed links to internal more 'protected' content.

There is one possible answer, although I haven't tried it and I don't know the risks of it as such. Mind you, the New York Times does something similar and it's been stated as okay by big G in the past, so here goes:

1) Have your pages detect the presence of a bot (Googlebot, MSNbot, Slurp!, whatever).

2) Present the pages to your bot that your users would see IF they clicked "ok" at the landing page deal.

3) Have the pages detect (probably session variable or cookie or both) whether or not the user has agreed to the disclaimer on the landing page and only enter the site if they have.

That should get around most, if not all issues. And it's not really a black-hat tactic IMHO as long as the same content is presented in the end because the user will still see it provided they agree to a disclaimer, and since NYT does something similar as mentioned earlier.

What SEs tend to have a problem with are pages created AS landing/doorway pages with nothing but repeated keywords. This isn't the case here.

I really don't think you're going to have the problems you think you might. It sounds like you basically have a normal site that has an extra page to get through before getting to the home page.

When Googlebot gets to the warning page they'll still find the link into the site. It doesn't sound like you need a password to get. It's just that there's a page in front of your real home page that 50% of the time takes someone to your home page and 50% of the time it takes them to the planned parenthood site. (assuming random clicking). Well it looks like you have a few other links on the warning page so it's not 50/50, but you get the idea. To help the spiders out you might want to keep just the enter and exit links on the warning page and move the rest of the external links inside.

I think all it means is it might take search spiders just a bit longer to find your pages than if the warning page wasn't there. I don't see any reason though why they won't find the rest of the pages assuming those other pages are optimized.

The hardest part from an seo standpoint might be that you won't be trying to get backlinks to deeper pages of the site since you want people coming in the front door via the warning. Your keyphrases will also be likely competing with sites in the porn industry. Your site is certainly not porn, but a lot of the same phrases will most likely be used so you will be competing with that industry.

I just looked at the warning page though and I don't see any reason it would cause problems other than it taking a little bit longer for spiders to find and index your pages. But it shouldn't be all that much longer than if the page wasn't there.

Think of it like driving to your local grocery store from your house. Basically all you're doing with the with the warning page is moving your house one street further away from the store. You can still get there. It's just going to require driving down that one extra street.

Thanks to all of you for this help. I will discuss it with those working with me on the building of this site.
Sincerely, Terry