GoogleBot Mobile & Depagination
-
I am building a new site for a client and we're discussing their inventory section. What I would like to accomplish is have all their products load on scroll (or swipe on mobile). I have seen suggestions to load all content in the background at once, and show it as they swipe, lazy loading the product images. This will work fine for the user, but what about how GoogleBot mobile crawls the page?
Will it simulate swiping? Will it load every product at once, killing page load times b/c of all of the images it must load at once? What are considered SEO best practices when loading inventory using this technique.
I worry about this b/c it's possible for 2,000+ results to be returned, and I don't want GoogleBot to try and load all those results at once (with their product thumbnail images). And I know you will say to break those products up into categories, etc. But I want the "swipe for more" experience. 99.9% of our users will click a category or filter the results, but if someone wants to swipe through all 2,000 items on the main inventory landing page, they can. I would rather have this option than "Page 1 of 350".
I like option #4 in this question, but not sure how Google will handle it.
I asked Matt Cutts to answer this, if you want to upvote this question.
https://www.google.com/moderator/#11/e=adbf4&u=CAIQwYCMnI6opfkj -
What you ideally want to do is set up the mobile site as a standard site. Then utilize javascript to call each page in an order defined by the users actions with dynamic loading.
This has two benefits:
-
SEO and SERP. The pages will be indexed as they should. If you have one huge page you are still limited to the 2 or 3 keywords as always. When you see a good infinite scroll website it is not one page, it only looks this way due to JavaScript calling additional pages at triggers that have been set.
-
No JavaScript graceful fallback (or fallforward as it is actually the native state). If you have one page, lazy loading with JavaScript and they do not support it then you have 2,000 pages worth of images loading at one time which is otherwise known as a bounce.
You will want to build out the site with no consideration to the infinite scrolling (except in design ie. tile-able backgrounds for a smooth non stop flow) then apply the script after you have a logical site structure using silo'ed categories. Google bot, Google bot mobile and users who do not have JavaScript will all have a useable site and the SERPS will rank pages as they should.
Tip: Keep any page wide bar or graphic styles in the header or the footer of the page. You will normally only call the content or article portion of the page to the infinite scroll so you have a non-stop flow on the site.
Hope this helps
I know your not using WordPress but I am assuming you are using some sort of templated PHP script for a 2K product store. This WP plugin is pretty easy to understand and what I first used to grab the concept. Also, if wanting to go a more Pinterest route look into Masonry JavaScript. http://www.infinite-scroll.com/
-
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
-
Issue with AMP pages
Hello, We have implemented AMP on our blog pages, but now some of the Web pages are also being shown like AMP pages. ( no footer and no navigation ) What could have gone wrong ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnroger0 -
Best SEO for table in mobile view
I'm wondering what the best way to present a table for mobile view in terms of SEO? It's a complicated table (not simple rows & columns but also col spans) which doesn't work with any responsive techniques I can find. I can offer different content for desktop / mobile so desktop is OK. But what's the best way forward with Google for mobile? I could offer a jpg or simply an explanation to revisit the page on desktop, but neither of those options seem particularly Google-friendly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ann640 -
SEM Rush & Duplicate content
Hi SEMRush is flagging these pages as having duplicate content, but we have rel = next etc implemented: https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/bott https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/bott?page=2 Or is it being flagged as they're just really similar pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
The Consequences & Best Practices In Changing Domains
Working with a long established/organic successful site that, for brand reasons I disagree with, is verging on changing its domain name. Other than 301ing individual pages to their new domain name equivalent, getting canonicals updated, updating SSL certificates, new Google Search Console with old settings, maintaining the old robots.txtetc what else is worth paying attention to? Assuming I do all of that, how bad a hit to organic over what period of time might this result in? 6 months ago we migrated to https and that was hardly felt, but this is really a brand new domain name altogether. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Parameter Strings & Duplicate Page Content
I'm managing a site that has thousands of pages due to all of the dynamic parameter strings that are being generated. It's a real estate listing site that allows people to create a listing, and is generating lots of new listings everyday. The Moz crawl report is continually flagging A LOT (25k+) of the site pages for duplicate content due to all of these parameter string URLs. Example: sitename.com/listings & sitename.com/listings/?addr=street name Do I really need to do anything about those pages? I have researched the topic quite a bit, but can't seem to find anything too concrete as to what the best course of action is. My original thinking was to add the rel=canonical tag to each of the main URLs that have parameters attached. I have also read that you can bypass that by telling Google what parameters to ignore in Webmaster tools. We want these listings to show up in search results, though, so I don't know if either of these options is ideal, since each would cause the listing pages (pages with parameter strings) to stop being indexed, right? Which is why I'm wondering if doing nothing at all will hurt the site? I should also mention that I originally recommend the rel=canonical option to the web developer, who has pushed back in saying that "search engines ignore parameter strings." Naturally, he doesn't want the extra work load of setting up the canonical tags, which I can understand, but I want to make sure I'm both giving him the most feasible option for implementation as well as the best option to fix the issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Mobile Site Annotations
Our company has a complex mobile situation, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement bidirectional annotations and a mobile sitemap. Our mobile presence consists of three different "types" of mobile pages: Most of our mobile pages are mobile-specific "m." pages where the URL is completely controlled via dynamic parameter paths, rather than static mobile URLs (because of the mobile template we're using). For example: http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory. We have created vanity 301 redirects for the majority of these pages, that look like http://m.example.com/product that simply redirect to the previous URL. Six one-off mobile pages that do have a static mobile URL, but are separate from the m. site above. These URLs look like http://www.example.com/product.mobile.html Two responsively designed pages with a single URL for both mobile and desktop. My questions are as follows: Mobile sitemap: Should I include all three types of mobile pages in my mobile sitemap? Should I include all the individual dynamic parameter m. URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory in the sitemap, or is that against Google's recommendations? Bidirectional Annotations: We are unable to add the rel="canonical" tag to the m. URLs mentioned in section #1 above because we cannot add dynamic tags to the header of the mobile template. We can, however, add them to the .mobile.html pages. For the rel="alternate" tags on the desktop versions, though, is it correct to use the dynamic parameter URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory as the mobile version target for the rel="alternate" tag? My initial thought is no, since they're dynamic parameter URLs. Is there even any benefit to doing this if we can't add the bidirectional rel="canonical" on those same m. dynamic URLs? I'd be immensely grateful for any advice! Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Critical_Mass0 -
Product Pages & Panda 4.0
Greeting MOZ Community: I operate a real estate web site in New York City (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). Of the 600 pages, about 350 of the URLs are product pages, written about specific listings. The content on these pages is quite short, sometimes only 20 words. My ranking has dropped very much since mid-May, around the time of the new Panda update. I suspect it has something to do with the very short product pages, the 350 listing pages. What is the best way to deal with these pages so as to recover ranking. I am considering these options: 1. Setting them to "no-index". But I am concerned that removing product pages is sending the wrong message to Google. 2. Enhancing the content and making certain that each page has at least 150-200 words. Re-writing 350 listings would be a real project, but if necessary to recover I will bite the bullet. What is the best way to address this issue? I am very surprised that Google does not understand that product URLs can be very brief and yet have useful content. Information about a potential office rental that lists location, size, price per square foot is valuable to the visitor but can be very brief. Especially listings that change frequently. So I am surprised by the penalty. Would I be better off not having separate URLs for the listings, and for instance adding them as posts within building pages? Is having separate URLs for product pages with minimal content a bad idea from an SEO perspective? Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can recover from this latest Panda penalty? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Responsive design (Showing diffrent pages(icons) for Mobile/Tablet users)
I'm writing this question just to insure that we are implementing the responsive design correctly.Example of pages: http://www.yamsafer.me/en/united-arab-emirates/abu-dhabi/hotel/beach-rotana-abu-dhabiAnother : http://www.yamsafer.me/enCan we show different pages(Enhanced for mobile users) to mobile/Tablets visitors (sure same content) but with new icons that enhance the User experience for mobile/tablet users , while hiding these items to PC, laptop users?.Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yamsafer.com0