Google Penalizing Websites that Have Contact Forms at Top of Website Page?
-
Has anyone else heard of Google penalizing websites for having their contact forms located at the top of the website?
For example http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/
Look forward to hearing other thoughts on this.
-
@ John - Sounds like a useful experiment for someone who can code and wants YouMoz exposure.
@ G.L.A. - G's "business model" is to use search to sell ads and not to provide the "best" results. I would not be surprised at all if G is now penalizing large contact forms, contact forms above the fold, etc. at least as harshly as some of the earlier Panda updates penalized over use of AdWords. If Adwords ads are not immune under certain conditions, why would contact forms for the site itself be treated more generously assuming all other things are equal ?
-
You could try an A/B test. On some pages, place the form below your #container div and absolute position the contact form back up to the top with CSS. After that, monitor for a bit and see if it helps. Perhaps it's the making of a future YOUmoz blog post?
-
I don't think the theory matches what google is trying to accomplish with many businesses the best thing customer can do for themselves is fill out a form & get what they need I think its almost like saying google would penalize you for putting your phone number up top.....
-
Nathan - Someone recently posted a thread on BHW which suggests Penguin penalized sites similar to what you're describing. (The examples are worth looking at and comparing to your site.) Other people are insisting that Penguin does not apply to any on page variables. Without setting up some throw away sites and testing, I do not know the answer and wish I did.
-
Google introduced a new algorithm change a few months back that looks at your page layout and if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results.
I have never heard of anything that would indicate this also applies to contact forms.
I would have said that normally it would always be best to put the content higher - and you would not want to push that content down (for similar reasons to the banner ads pushing content down). You want a good user experience. however - your form is integrated in a very thin bar and does not compromise the user experience in my opinion.
I would say you have nothing to worry about with that form and its placement.
I have put the relevant part of the GOOGLE release though below as it pertains to page layout and placement of content.
Quote:
We've heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it's difficult to find the actual content, they aren't happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn't have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.
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
-
What type of website is best for seo.
I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks
Web Design | | laurentjb0 -
Website speed is above ?
I want to ask that my best tennis guru website speed is above 2.8 sec do it have any negative impact on my site?
Web Design | | looper50 -
Website Form Doesn't Work for Visitors from Google Search App
I've got a strange issue where if visitor is viewing a website from within the Google Search App, the app doesn't seem to be able to handle online forms. The form relies users on entering data, which is then POSTed to an external booking engine site. Normally this works fine, except when Google Search App is acting as the browser, the post payload is empty and the URL breaks. We're a bit stumped as to how to move forward. So far the only lead is that Android users can override having the app behave as a browser - but doesn't seem like iOS users can. Any additional ideas/tips are welcome here - thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | mirabile0 -
Why is my homepage not indexed by Google or Bing
http://www.schoppnutritionclinic.com/ Home page is not indexed by Google or Bing but all other pages are indexed. I know that currently i am missing the robot.TXT file and the sitemap. This is something i am woking on as a possible solution. I would have thought Google/Bing would have still indexed this page regardless of the lack of sitemap/robot.txt files not being present. I attempted to run a fetch and render in Webmaster tools and received a Not Found status.
Web Design | | ChrisSams0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
Google pagespeed / lazy image load
Hi, we are using the apache module of google pagespeed. It works really great, helps a lot. But today I've asked me one question: Does the "lazy load" feature for images harm the ranking? The module reworks the page to load the images only if the are visible at the screen. Is this behavior also triggered by the google bot? Or are the images invisible for google? Any expirience about that? Best wishes, Georg.
Web Design | | GeorgFranz0 -
Two home pages?
One of my campaigns shows duplicate page content for domain xxx and xxx/index. There is only one index (home) page, so why does it report on two?
Web Design | | Beemer0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0