How not to get penalized by having a Single Page Interface (SPI) ?
-
Guys, I run a real estate website where my clients pay me to advertise their properties.
The thing is, from the beginning, I had this idea about a user interface that would remain entirely on the same page. On my site the user can filter the properties on the left panel, and the listings (4 properties at each time) are refreshed on the right side, where there is pagination.
So when the user clicks on one property ad, the ad is loaded by ajax below the search panel in the same page .. there's a "back up" button that the user clicks to go back to the search panel and click on another property.
People are loving our implementation and the user experience, so I simply can't let go of this UI "inovation" just for SEO, because it really is something that makes us stand out from our competitors.
My question, then, is: how not to get penalized in SEO by having this Single Page Interface, because in the eyes of Google users might not be browsing my site deep enough ?
-
Hi,
Google and Bing can see how much time your users spend on the page, and since they can also see that there is a large amount of information accessible through that page, I don't think you need to be as worried about the "single page" factor as normal.
That said, just because your main user interface lives within a single page, there is no reason that you cannot have other pages linked to it. In fact there are a number of other pages which should be included in your site. For example: Contact, About, Terms, Privacy Policy and (if relevant) Disclosure and/or Disclaimer. They do not have to be right up front or included in your main UI, but they should at least be available for users as text links at the bottom of the page, in a sidebar or somewhere. If you don’t include them you are reducing the appearance of transparency for the site. This works against trust and will make people less confident about doing business through your site. Given that you are in real estate, these things should be a major consideration.
Also, if you do not have an About page, you are reducing your opportunity to grow your customer base and add more clients.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
If you have your listings available in an unordered list, that should be fine. If there aren't hundreds and hundreds of listings on your site, I don't think Google will have a problem with your implementation. If there are, you might consider building static pages for each category, and linking to the listings from there.
-
John, thanks for the quick reply.
I had already read the "make your Ajax page indexable", but unfortunately it was too late in product development and our programmers simply convinced us it would imply re-doing the entire backend for it to work.
So we already have in place a workaround for crawlers reach all these listings. Below the search panel (that has Ajax pagination and loads the ads on the same page with javascript) we have a standard html
So the crawlers can reach the properties individual pages. In other words, we comply with the rule "make each of your pages reachable by at least one internal link".
But my question was more focused about how google "sees" the navigation pattern of my users ... I know the crawler is reaching those pages, but since the majority of users use the search panel (that loads the properties by javascript/ajax) and not the static links below it, it might appear that the users only viewed one page inside our site.
-
Is there some alternate navigation to reach all of these listings without using your AJAX search? Or are the listings included in a sitemap? Is there some way for Google to find them already?
I'd recommend reading http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ to learn more about how to make your AJAXy pages indexable. You may also want to take a look at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html if you have prev and next pagination. If you have a view all, and want to make that the canonical form, you'll want to look at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html
Also, in Bing Webmaster Tools, you can go to the Crawl > Crawl Settings tab and enable the "Configure your site to have bingbot crawl escaped fragmented URLs containing #!." option if that's applicable to you.
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
-
Toggle Tabs on pages - How to present information to users
Hi all, I can use some help with SEO/UX related question I have got. I have a client who has some toggel tabs on its website. Is there a way to display the relevant information from these toggle tabs when a user lands on the page instead of having the same toggle tab show for whenever a user reaches the page? What I am trying to understand is that if a user searched for "vitamin C benefit" (lets say) in Google and then clicks on the link, the user is presented with the "benefits" tab on the page instead of "side effects" tab. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks
Web Design | | Malika1
Malika0 -
Pushstate and Infinite Scrolling Article Pages: Is it detrimental to not change URLs as the page is being scrolled?
I've noticed a recent trend of news sites using infinite scrolling on article pages to garner more pageviews and I can assume serve up more ads. Here is an overview. Here is an article from NBC news that uses this technique: http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/grammys-2016-here-s-why-adele-s-performance-was-out-n519186 Studies have shown that this technique has decreased bounce rates by +15% for some sites. My question is: If a site is using the technique without changing URLs as the user scrolls down what overall negative effects does this have? Obviously you wouldn't be getting credit for the extra pageviews but I was wondering if there were any indexation implications with this. Here is an example of article infinite scrolling without changing the URL: http://www.wftv.com/news/national-content/deputies-wife-attacks-husband-because-he-didnt-get-her-a-valentines-day-gift/87691927
Web Design | | Cox-Media-Group1 -
Site with no ads hit by Page Layout update?
Hi there! Can a site that has no ads on it be hit by Google's latest Page Layout update? Can it be hit for just one or two keywords? My site (www.ink2paper.com) has a decline in Google organic traffic in early Feb so my suspicion is the Page Layout update. However I have no ads on the site. Digging into GWMT I find that it is only one or 2 keywords that seems to have taken a dive, mainly [photo paper]. I used to get around 80 imps a day for this term. Then on 6 Feb it was down to 50; 7 Feb = 34; 8 Feb just 4 impressions! I got a spike back at usual levels on 10 & 11 Feb, but since then it has been back down to only 5 or so impressions a day. [photographic paper] took a small hit at the start of February, but has nose dived since the start of April. The homepage performs well for Google organic traffic - low bounce (22%) and good ecom conversion rate (14%) - although this is likely to be largely branded traffic. I feel my site is a 'good' result for the search term [photo paper], although there is always room for improvement of course! Any suggestions as to why Google has stopped showing my site for these keywords? All help is greatly appreciated. Cheers,
Web Design | | SimonHogg
Simon0 -
Existing URL structure and how to handle new pages before migration
Hi there! Currently, our site uses underscores "_" within the url structure. We are moving to Wordpress soon (the site is currently static html) but it will be a couple of months before the migration. Here is an example of the current structure: www.oldsitestructure.com/about_us/success_stories/custom_vinyl_banners When we do change, our url structure will have hyphen's "-" to separate terms, so the preferred new structure will be: www.oldsitestructure.com/about-us/success-stories/custom-vinyl-banners The entire site (with the exception of our Wordpress blog) currently uses the old structure. We have about 10 - 15 pages we will add before our migration, my question is: Should we use the preferred url structure starting NOW or stick with the old one? And set up 301 redirects are part of the migration process? Many thanks!
Web Design | | SEOSponge
Jon0 -
Post vs Pages
Does Google make any distinction between a web page and a blog post? Assuming all else is equal...any reason why a page would rank higher than a post? And that includes a page in WordPress vs a WordPress blog post.
Web Design | | Pinlaser1 -
One Page Guide vs. Multiple Individual Pages
Howdy, Mozzers! I am having a battle with my inner-self regarding how to structure a resources section for our website. We're building out several pieces of content that are meant to be educational for our clients and I'm having trouble deciding how to layout the content structure. We could either layout all eight short sections on a single page, or create individual pages for each section. The goal is obviously to attract new potential clients by targeting these terms that they may be searching for in an information gathering stage. Here's my dilemma...
Web Design | | jpretz
With the single page guide, it would be nice because it will have a lot of content (and of course, keywords) to be picked up by the SERPS but I worry that it is going to be a bit crammed (because of eight sections) for the user. The individual pages would be much better organized and you can target more specific keywords, but I worry that it may get flagged for light content as some pages may have as little as a 150 word description. I have always been mindful of writing copy for searchers over spiders, but now I'm at a more technical crossroads as far as potentially getting dinged for not having robust content on each page. Here's where you come in...
What do you think is the better of the two options? I like the idea of having the multiple pages because of the ability to hone-in on a keyword and the clean, organized feel, but I worry about the lack of content (and possibly losing out on long-tail opportunities). I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please and thank you. Ready annnnnnnnnnnnd GO!0 -
Contact form on home page.
I am looking to add a contact form onto my home page and I was wondering if it made sense to change my index.html to an index.php. If i do make this change, would it have any impact on my search rankings?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Too Many On Page Links, rel="nofollow" and rel="external"
Hi, Though similar to other questions on here I haven't found any other examples of sites in the same position as mine. It's an e-commerce site for mobile phones that has product pages for each phone we sell. Each tariff that is available on each phone links through to the checkout/transfer page on the respective mobile phone network. Therefore when the networks offer 62 different tariffs that are available on a single phone that means we automatically start with 62 on page links that helps to quickly tip us over the 100 link threshold. Currently, we mark these up as rel="external" but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to help the situation and prevent us being penalised for having too many links on page so: Can/should we mark these up as rel="nofollow" instead of, or as well as, rel="external"? Is it inherently a problem from a technical SEO point of view? Does anyone have any similar experiences or examples that might help myself or others? As always, any help or advice would be much appreciated 🙂
Web Design | | Tinhat0