What is your opinion in the use of jquery for a continuous scroll type of page layout?
-
So, I'm in 2 minds about this; let me start with a bit of background info.
Context
We have a new client who is in the final days of their new site design and were when they first contacted us. Their design essentially uses 5 pages, each with several pages worth of content on each, separated with the use of jquery. What this means is a user can click a menu item from a drop-down in the nav and be taken directly to that section of content like using internal anchor links as if it were a separate page, or they can click the top-level nav item and scroll through each "sub-page" without having to click other links.Vaguely similar to Google's "How Search Works" page if each sector of that page had it's own URL, only without the heavy design elements and slow load time.
In this process, scrolling down to each new "sub-page" changes the URL in the address bar and is treated as a new page as far as referencing the page, adding page titles, meta descriptions, backlinks etc. From my research this also means search engines don't see the entire page, they see each sub-page as their own separate item like a normal site.
My Reservations I'm worried about this for several reasons, the largest of them being that you're essentially presenting the user with something different to the search engines. The other big one being that I just don't know if search engines really can render this type of formatting correctly or if there's anything I need to look out for here.
Since they're so close to launching their new site, I don't have time to set up a test environment and I'm not going to gamble with a new corporate website but they're also going to be very resistant to the advice of "start the design over, it's too dangerous".
The Positives
For this client in particular, the design actually works very well. Each of these long pages is essentially about a different service they offer and the continuous scrolling through the "sub-pages" acts as almost a workflow through the process, covering each step in order.It also looks fantastic, loads quickly and has a very simple nav so the overall user experience is great. Since the majority of my focus in SEO is on UX, this is my confusion. Part of me thinks that obscuring the other content on these pages and only showing each individual "sub-page" to search engines is an obvious no-no, the other part of me feels that this kind of user experience and the reasonable prevalence of AJAX/Paralax etc means search engines should be more capable of understanding what's going on here.
Can anyone possibly shed some light on this with either some further reading or first-hand experience?
-
Hi Michael, thanks for the input.
I completely agree with you about content length but perhaps I'm a little confused here.
If search engines aren't going to see content hidden by jquery, would that not mean the only content I'm seen to have is what's immediately visible on page load?
-
Google is NOT going to see the content that's rendered by scrolling. In general, more is better in terms of content on a single page (provided it's not crap of course). See this article from Search Engine Land.
For those same reasons, having it on separate pages isn't as good an idea. If you think about how RankBrain is supposed to work, Google is going to be looking for terms on the page that commonly co-occur with the page's primary target search term on other pages on the web about that topic. So, by farming subsections of content out to other pages, you're shooting yourself in the foot, as Google is only going to give you brownie points for covering the subtopics in the very first page.
A better way to do this:
- put all the content on one page
- in the onload() or the Jquery document ready function, hide all but the first page's worth of content
- now, you can react to a scroll by calling Jscript functions to hide the currently shown content and show the next page's worth...all on the same URL
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
-
Using WebP Image Alongside Existing Images
Is it worthwhile to add in WebP images alongside existing images? WebP Images can be three times smaller than PNGs and 25% smaller than JPGs, according to a plugin option I am looking at. The alternative WebP images are provided via CDN. Does anyone have any experience with this, and is it worth doing?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
JS and HTML links: Any risk involved being employing two similar links on every page?
Hi all, We used a have a banner with link from all pages our subdomain. The link is JS link and it's linking to our website homepage from our sub domain. Recently we have added similar HTML link from all pages of sub domain presuming that Google might not be considering JS links. So, now we have 2 links (JS and HTML) from every page of sub domain pointing to the website. If Google considers 2 links, will there be any risk for employing same link twice from every page? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Can we link back from help documents to product or features pages on website?
Hi, We have all our help documents on subdirectory linked for all the features or products we provide. Like we linked website.com/help/seo-guide from website.com/services/seo-product as that is relevant guide. Do we need to link back from all help guide pages to product pages? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Internal linking: Repeating same low level pages from high hierarchy level pages
Hi all, We have 3 editions of our product we are trying to rank better. Some of our features level pages from these editions are repeating in these 3 editions. Exactly like below example: clothes.com/cotton-fabrics/shirts clothes.com/wool-fabrics/shirts clothes.com/polyester-fabrics/shirts "Shirts" pages repeat in "cotton-fabrics", "wool-fabrics" and "polyester-fabrics". We have added rel=canonical to rank "shirts" in rank only one category. I wonder do we need to take any other measures to make sure that these pages don't affect us negatively. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Is anyone here managing or doing SEO for a site using GoECart?
We are preparing to update/migrate to a new ecommerce platform. We are in the process of choosing right now. One of the things we know we want is faceted navigation, but I am well aware of the problems this presents for SEO. Are any of you amazing people here using, managing or have experience with GoECart? I am interested to know your feedback, particularly from an SEO viewpoint. Thanks in advance! Dana
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Is anyone using Humans.txt in your websites? What do you think?
http://humanstxt.org Anyone using this on their websites and if so have you seen and positive benefits of doing so? Would be good to see some examples of sites using it and potentially how you're using the files. I'm considering adding this to my checklist for launching sites
Web Design | | eseyo1 -
Anyone Got An Honest Opinion Of WPengine
Hi Guys, I wonder if any of you have used / are using WPengine. I am had thought about using them before and was really impressed by there load speeds. They are pretty expensive though when compared to others. Now, I already have ok hosting but everything is run through a cdn and S3 for streaming HD Videos. Is it worthwhile shelling out for WP engine (pro) or is it better to just stick with an OK host and cdn. Opinions are greatly appreciated. Thanks Jenson
Web Design | | jensonseo0 -
E-commerce Site Layout
I have got an e-commerce site already and i am thinking of staring a new e-commerce site with new domain, but i will keep the layout and design same. Products would be similar to what i sell on my other ecommerce site Will Google Penalise me of having same layout and same design or is it ok to open multiple ecommerce sites with same layouts
Web Design | | usef4u0