Why portals need their own SEO approach
A portal might be a company directory, a classifieds board, a job database, an events listing or a service aggregator. Its strength is the sheer number of similar objects, and that is also its main risk: if pages differ only by a city name, search engines see thousands of near-identical documents and stop trusting them.
So the work starts with a page map, not with copywriting. Define which page types exist, which search intent each one serves, and what a page must contain to be useful to a person rather than just exist in a database.
It helps to sort everything into four groups: object pages, lists by category and city, filter pages and internal search results. Each group needs its own rules on indexing, title patterns and mandatory content blocks.
Structure that mirrors how people search
A typical ladder runs from the homepage to a section, a category, a category with a city or district, and finally the object page. A query like “jobs” belongs to a section, “accountant in Tashkent” to a category with a city, and the name of a specific company to an object page.
Before drawing the menu, check how people actually phrase queries. In Uzbekistan they are typed in Russian, Uzbek and sometimes English, and district names appear in several spellings, such as Yunusabad, Yunusobod and Юнусабад. If keyword research ignores these variants, part of the demand ends up with no landing page.
Object pages: the minimum data before publishing
A page with nothing but a title looks empty to a search engine. Decide the minimum in advance: description, district or address, contacts, specifications, photos. If the data is missing, the page stays unpublished or is blocked from indexing until it is filled in.
Build titles and H1s from database fields such as name, category and city, but make sure they read like human language. Uniqueness comes from reviews, questions, photos and blocks such as “similar” and “nearby”. Add structured data that matches the object type: organisation, job, product or event.
Combination pages: do not mass-produce empty ones
“Cafés with a terrace in Yunusabad” or “daily apartment rentals near the metro” can become strong landing pages. But if a generator creates every possible combination, the site fills up with thousands of empty or near-duplicate URLs. A combination page should be indexable only when:
- search data shows real demand for that combination
- there are enough objects on the page to choose from
- it has a unique intro and useful data, such as the number of offers
- all other combinations are handled with canonical, noindex or robots.txt
Indexing and crawl budget
Googlebot spends limited time on any site, and on a large portal it will not visit every URL. If much of that time goes to sorting options, parameters and empty filters, important pages reach the index more slowly. The practical checklist:
- split sitemaps by page type and keep only live URLs in them
- make sure internal links lead to every object page
- block sorting, service parameters and internal search
- set up pagination correctly in categories
- keep server response times low
Expired listings and user-generated content
What happens to a page after an item is sold or a vacancy is filled? If people and links still arrive, keep the page with a clear notice and a block of similar offers. If it has no value, return 404 or 410 and remove it from the sitemap. The choice depends on how many such pages you have and how much traffic they bring.
Reviews, questions and user listings are a source of unique text, but without moderation you get spam and duplicates. You need publishing rules, spam filters and rel=ugc on user-submitted links. If your data is partly taken from other sites, search engines may prefer the original source. Your value lies in what single sites lack: comparison, filters, reviews and the full range in one place. Make that visible on category pages.
Two languages and measuring results
For the Uzbek market a portal usually needs Russian and Uzbek versions. That means two versions of every page, hreflang and separate text templates. Do not make the Uzbek templates a machine translation of the Russian ones: a template repeats across thousands of pages, and any mistake repeats with it.
Judge results by templates and page groups, not single URLs: indexed pages by type, the share of pages with impressions, traffic by section and, above all, business actions such as enquiries, calls, Telegram clicks and payments through Click or Payme. Test any template change on a subset of pages first.
If you want to find where your portal loses traffic, markdev offers SEO optimisation in Uzbekistan. Tell us about the project and we can discuss which templates to fix first.
FAQ
How is portal SEO different from SEO for a regular website?
A portal earns traffic from thousands of template pages, so rules matter most: which pages get indexed, how titles are built, and what to do with empty or expired objects. Work happens at the template level rather than page by page.
Should every filter combination be indexable?
No. Index only combinations with real demand and enough objects. Handle the rest with canonical, noindex or robots.txt to avoid empty and near-duplicate pages.
What should I do with expired listings?
If the page still gets traffic and links, keep it with a notice and similar offers. If it has no value, return 404 or 410 and remove it from the sitemap.
Can I machine-translate Russian templates into Uzbek?
It is better not to. Templates repeat across thousands of pages, so translation errors multiply. Write the Uzbek text separately and connect the versions with hreflang.
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