Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Lazy Loading of Blog Posts and Crawl Depths
-
Hi Moz Fans,
We are looking at our blog and improving the content as much as we can for SEO purposes, but we have hit a bit of a blank in terms of lazy loading implications and issues with crawl depths.
We introduced lazy loading onto the blog home page to increase site speed initially and it works well with infinite scroll, but we were wondering whether this would cause any issues regarding SEO.
A lot of the resources online seem to be conflicting and some are very outdated, so some clarification on what is best in terms of lazy loading and crawl depths for blogs, would be fantastic!
I hope someone can help and give us some up to date insights - If you need anymore information, I'll reply ASAP
-
This is fantastic - Thank you!
-
Lazy load and infinite scroll are absolutely not the same thing, as far as search crawlers are concerned.
Lazy-loaded content, if it exists in the dom of the page will be indexed but it's importance will likely be reduced (any content that requires user interaction to see is reduced in ranking value).
But because infinite scroll is unmanageable for the crawler (it's not going to stay on one page and keep crawling for hours as every blog post rolls into view) Google's John Mueller has said the crawler will simply stop at the bottom of the initial page load.
This webinar/discussion on crawl and rendering from just last week included G's John Mueller and a Google engineer and will give you exactly the info you're looking for, right from the horse's mouth, Victoria.
To consider though - the blog's index page shouldn't be the primary source for the blog's content anyway - the individual permalinked post URLs are what should be crawled and ranking for the individual post content. And the xml sitemap should be the primary source for google's discovery of those URLs. Though obviously linking from authoritative pages will help the posts, but that's going to change every time the blog index page updates anyway. Also, did you know that you can submit the blog's RSS feed as a sitemap in addition to the xml sitemap? It's the fastest way I've found of getting new blog posts crawled/indexed.
Hope that helps!
Paul
-
I'm afraid I don't have an insight into how Google crawls with lazy loading.
Which works better for your user, pagination or lazy loading? I wouldn't worry about lazy loading and Google. If you're worried about getting pages indexed then I would make sure you've got a sitemap that works correctly.
-
Great, thank you
Do you have any insight into crawl depth too?
At what point would Google stop crawling the page with lazy loading? Is it best to use pagination as opposed to infinite scroll? -
With lazy loading, the code can actually still be seen in the source code. That's what Google uses, so you should be fine with using this as it's becoming a common practice now.
-
Yes, it's similar to the BBC page and loads when it is needed by the user so to speak.
It increased the site loading, but do you know at what point Google would stop indexing the content on our site?
How do we ensure that the posts are being crawled and is pagination the best way to go?
-
I'd have to say, not too familiar with the method you are using, but I take it the idea is elements of the page load as you scroll like BBC?
If it decreases the load time of the site that is good for both direct and indirect SEO, But the key thing is can Google see the contents of the page or not? - Use Google Search Console and fetch the page to see if it contains the content.
Also, Google will not hang around on your site, if it doesn't serve the content within a reasonable amount of time it will bounce off to the next page, or the next site to crawl. It's harsh, but it's a fact.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blog On Subdomain - Do backlinks to the blog posts on Subdomain count as links for main site?
I want to put blog on my site. The IT department is asking that I use a subdomain (myblog.mysite.com) instead of a subfolder (mysite.com/myblog). I am worried b/c it was my understanding that any links I get to my blog posts (if on subdomain) will not count toward the main site (search engines would view almost as other website). The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks. That is why I prefer the subfolder location for the Blog. Can anyone tell me if I am thinking about this right? Another solution I am being offered is to use a reverse proxy. Thoughts? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecerbone0 -
Google crawling different content--ever ok?
Here are a couple of scenarios I'm encountering where Google will crawl different content than my users on initial visit to the site--and which I think should be ok. Of course, it is normally NOT ok, I'm here to find out if Google is flexible enough to allow these situations: 1. My mobile friendly site has users select a city, and then it displays the location options div which includes an explanation for why they may want to have the program use their gps location. The user must choose the gps, the entire city, or he can enter a zip code, or choose a suburb of the city, which then goes to the link chosen. OTOH it is programmed so that if it is a Google bot it doesn't get just a meaningless 'choose further' page, but rather the crawler sees the page of results for the entire city (as you would expect from the url), So basically the program defaults for the entire city results for google bot, but for for the user it first gives him the initial ability to choose gps. 2. A user comes to mysite.com/gps-loc/city/results The site, seeing the literal words 'gps-loc' in the url goes out and fetches the gps for his location and returns results dependent on his location. If Googlebot comes to that url then there is no way the program will return the same results because the program wouldn't be able to get the same long latitude as that user. So, what do you think? Are these scenarios a concern for getting penalized by Google? Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?
Hi, I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap. We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com. Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap? In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap? What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file? Specifically: **example.com/sitemap.xml ** would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)? example.com/robots.xml would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap? blog.example.com/sitemap.xml would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)? blog.example.com/robots.xml does a subdomain need its own robots file? I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it. I appreciate your help with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo.owl0 -
High resolution (retina) images vs load time
I have an ecommerce website and have a product slider with 3 images. Currently, I serve them at the native size when viewed on a desktop browser (374x374). I would like to serve them using retina image quality (748px). However how will this affect my ranking due to load time? Does Google take into account image load times even though these are done asynchronously? Also as its a slider, its only the first image which needs to load. Do the other images contribute at all to the page load time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deelo5551 -
Ranking Page - Category vs. Blog Post - What is best for CTR?
Hi, I am not sure wether I shall rank with a category page, or create a new post. Let me explain... If I google for 'Basic SEO' I see an article from Rand with Authorship markup. That's cool so I can go straight to this result because I know there might be some good insight. BUT: 'Basic SEO' is also an category at MOZ an it is not ranking. On the other hand, if I google for 'advanced SEO' then the MOZ category for 'advanced SEO' is ranking. But there is no authorship image, so users are much less likely to click on that result. Now, I want to rank for a very important keyword for me (content keyword, not transactional). Therefor, I have a category called 'yoga exercises'. But shall I rather create an post about them only to increase CTR due to Google Authorship? I read in Google guidelines that Authorship on homepage an category pages are not appreciated. Hope you have some insights that can help me out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Blog posts not showing in serps for exact match title search
hi- my first client ranks #1 for the exact phrase of each blog post title the 2nd client doesnt rank anywhere when i search for the exact post title 2nd client has robots.txt User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ezpro9
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/ so that shouldnt noindex any posts right? his site ranks for many kw's - but oddly none of his blog posts are anywhere to be found - i dont mean for a kw search - i mean for searching for the entire title he doesnt rank anywhere in first 5 pages for any of 6-7 posts i checked any idea what could cause this? thanks0