Does page size and relative content position affect SEO?
-
Good morning,
Each product page of our e-commerce site consists of a fairly lengthy header and footer. The former of which contains links to ~60 product categories, the logo, etc, while the latter contains information such as the latest posts from our blog, links to support, etc. The main "content" of the page is of course product related information, which also happens to contain a bit of templated data such as links which when clicked open respective sliders containing information regarding our return and shipping policies.
The question: We wonder whether the relative "size" of the page has anything to do with SEO results. As an example, suppose the page header consists of 20% of the total page size, the important page-specific content consumes 60%, and the footer consumes the final 20%. Is this relevant?
Or to rephrase the question: Should we be concerned about keeping our headers and footers as small as possible?
Thanks!
-
My sample size is small (I am currently maintaining just four sites) but all of them include a large banner on top, which leaves 95% of text content below the fold. None of them have been penalized for this so far, and all of them rank well.
As for the original question, such ratio does not seem to affect standings of the sites I've worked on. However, keep in mind that such heavily skewed page interface tends to look bad, affecting your customers' UX. I would try to keep your footer at most as large as the body of your smallest page.
-
Certainly your content should be substantial, or you will be done for thin content, but what they limit is no one knows for sure, you would also want to see some content above the fold. Google recently bought out a update that penalizes pages with no content above the fold. How I read it, it is mainly for pages that have lots of adds and other stuff and the content you searched for below the fold, but could mean that you need some text above the fold that mentions the search terms.
So if you want to rank for widgets, you would want to have the keyword widgests above the fold.http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
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
-
Need help related to SEO ?
Hi, Hope you guys are doing well! I need help from experts, I have a query that "Does google allows SEO for websites related to crypto currency ?" If yes, what is best way to do SEO for crypto currency website ?
Technical SEO | | JessicaThompson0 -
Which is better Ajax, iframe in terms of seo for my category page review section?
Hello, Whatever reviews I receive from customer on my Product page same reviews I show on relevant Category and Subcategory Pages. Now due to this I feel somewhat my page google consider as duplicate. Not sure. So I am planning to use either ajax or iframe on my categories pages so that google can't read my reviews of category pages. Is it a good practice to use ajax or iframe or anything else you can suggest? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | wright3350 -
Static or dynamic category pages for seo
Hi, I'm developing an accommodation site with a limited number of properties in 8 categories. I had been looking at making the properties blog posts and then using category function to show lists but its going to require a lot of customisation and I have seo concerns about the dynamic content as the category page is crucial. As I don't have a lot to add and listings will remain the same my latest thought was to create all as pages. However if I create a page with a list of 12 properties on a category page is there anyway of adding some sorting criteria to that page (would be 7 options - swimming pool, near beach, on site creche, budget, mid-range, luxury) Thanks for any tips Neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe1 -
Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?
If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
Does our new home page design look better and better for seo
Hi, i would like to know if our new design for our home www.in2town.co.uk page looks better than it did. We are trying to target the keyword for lifestyle magazine and lifestyle news. We are wondering if we should add more colour or graphics to the home page. we are going through each section of the site to make it a more enjoyable experience for our readers. If anyone can give us advice on keeping people on the page and using different social media techniques then that would be great. Through some excellent advice on here we are going to be starting a facebook page
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Advice on importing content please to keep page fresh
Hi i am working on a site at the moment http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com which is a travel news and holiday news site but i am trying to find out what is best reference content for the following section http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/humberside-airport What i am thinking of doing to keep google keep coming to my section of the site is to import content, what i mean is, to use google for keywords such as humerside airport and have the stories appear on this page as well as writing my own content. I was thinking of importing content because it would help keep the page fresh without my original content become too old but i am concerned about this and not sure if it is the right thing to do. i am concerned if i do this if my rankings would reduce because i am importing content and for people to read the rest of the story they will have to leave my site. i am also worried that google will reduct points for duplicate content. can anyone let me know what i should do, if i should just stick to original content and not import it or to import it and if i should import it using google news how would i do this. many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860