Private Pages - Do They Need Keywords?

should these pages also be optimized?

[shimeal]

I have a site that is divided into a public area and a private (member ID and log-in required) area. Do I need to add keywords and the like to the pages in the private area? Will it help my SE rank?

[diamondgrl]

how, exactly, does the search engine know the password to log in to the private site?

[shimeal]

The search engine doesn't know a password...the private pages are blocked based upon session variables - how can I give the search engine spiders access to these pages without letting others in? Here is the code I am using:

<?
session_start();
if($_SESSION['CustomerID'] == "")
{ header("Location: login.php"); }
?>

[chrisgarrett]

Why have them private then? If they are private you do not want the SE in as then they will appear in the cache and people will not need to login?

[diamondgrl]

You could filter based on useragent. Of course, that means anyone spoofing a seaerch engine will also be able to get all the pages.

[CanadianChris]

I believe you're looking at cloaking a page. Easy to do, but it'll get your site banned from G* and Y* if they catch you. Take a look at the Cloaking forum, there's lots of threads on this.

[Robert Charlton]

You'll also lose most of the traffic that comes in via search to these pages. Nothing like clicking on a link to a page you're not allowed to access.