SEO question...
March 10, 2022 6:27 AM Subscribe
Do "row scrolling" (I don't know what they're technically called) web sites like this one affect SEO?
I have a website that has a very high-ranking page on the Google and it's very important to my business that it stays that way. My site is being redesigned and will keep all the URLs the same and much of the text on that page, but I quite like the way that style of page scrolls as it breaks the info into bite-sized chunks (there's a lot of info on the page in question -- people tend to spend 40+ minutes on it).
If I adopt this mode of scrolling will my SEO drop or can the spider thingies handle that style of page?
Most people who read the page in question are doing so on a computer rather than a phone. Not sure if that makes a difference.
Thanks!
I have a website that has a very high-ranking page on the Google and it's very important to my business that it stays that way. My site is being redesigned and will keep all the URLs the same and much of the text on that page, but I quite like the way that style of page scrolls as it breaks the info into bite-sized chunks (there's a lot of info on the page in question -- people tend to spend 40+ minutes on it).
If I adopt this mode of scrolling will my SEO drop or can the spider thingies handle that style of page?
Most people who read the page in question are doing so on a computer rather than a phone. Not sure if that makes a difference.
Thanks!
Best answer: The format change theoretically shouldn't affect your SEO rankings, provided all of the image alt text, URLs, and other site metadata stay intact or have working redirects. In fact, if your website is less-mobile friendly now, shifting to a responsive / more-mobile friendly layout like the one in your example would probably help strengthen your rankings in the long term.
Where you could potentially see some drop off, at least in the short term, is if you change your site content too much. You say that most of the text will be staying the same, so you might not see too drastic a drop, but it's definitely possible your search ranking might fall a little bit for a short time after the initial switch. But the spiders are pretty speedy, and as long as you keep your good keywords intact, it shouldn't take long for everything to even itself out again. This might even be a good opportunity to do some additional keyword research to see if you could widen your search reach a bit. Good luck!
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:28 AM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
Where you could potentially see some drop off, at least in the short term, is if you change your site content too much. You say that most of the text will be staying the same, so you might not see too drastic a drop, but it's definitely possible your search ranking might fall a little bit for a short time after the initial switch. But the spiders are pretty speedy, and as long as you keep your good keywords intact, it shouldn't take long for everything to even itself out again. This might even be a good opportunity to do some additional keyword research to see if you could widen your search reach a bit. Good luck!
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:28 AM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
The site you linked gets pretty awful scores on Google's PageSpeed insights tool; it takes a long time to first load, while nothing shows but a spinner icon, and then even longer to render and run its animations to the point where a user can actually interact with it.
The Google tool gave me a 12 seconds "time to interactive" measure ; that's long enough for a LOT of potential new users to give up thinking the site is broken or shoddy and move onto the next thing in their feed.
I wouldn't say don't do it, but do be aware of aspects beyond keywords, urls and your historic site performance. Site usability and user behaviour are measured by search engines and have played an ever increasing role in search ranking, alongside social network signals, for some years. Even if you're not running Google analytics, Google can infer much much more that your first think about how people react to your site from data gathered before / after visits.
This sort of design can be implemented whilst still being speedy and responsive, but it requires deliberate effort and choice of front-end tech to do so. For reference, you can (often) find out what technology a site is running easily, Wordpress in this case.
I would suggest talking to the people redesigning your site, showing them that example as a style you like and asking their take on its speed, responsiveness and tech choices. If they try to hand wave a response, I would consider shopping around ; if they're honest about it but can't suggest alternative ways of achieving the effect, and you want to stick with them for budgetary or other reasons, then I would strongly consider going for a simpler redesign.
posted by protorp at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Google tool gave me a 12 seconds "time to interactive" measure ; that's long enough for a LOT of potential new users to give up thinking the site is broken or shoddy and move onto the next thing in their feed.
I wouldn't say don't do it, but do be aware of aspects beyond keywords, urls and your historic site performance. Site usability and user behaviour are measured by search engines and have played an ever increasing role in search ranking, alongside social network signals, for some years. Even if you're not running Google analytics, Google can infer much much more that your first think about how people react to your site from data gathered before / after visits.
This sort of design can be implemented whilst still being speedy and responsive, but it requires deliberate effort and choice of front-end tech to do so. For reference, you can (often) find out what technology a site is running easily, Wordpress in this case.
I would suggest talking to the people redesigning your site, showing them that example as a style you like and asking their take on its speed, responsiveness and tech choices. If they try to hand wave a response, I would consider shopping around ; if they're honest about it but can't suggest alternative ways of achieving the effect, and you want to stick with them for budgetary or other reasons, then I would strongly consider going for a simpler redesign.
posted by protorp at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Addendum, after taking in what you say about 40+ minute user sessions on your page... that's almost certainly an extremely strong positive historic signal on Google's side about the quality of your content, and this would make me even more cautious and liable to avoid a radical design / interface change.
The unanswerable question is, how many (users who click a high-ranking search result but then come back and click another link or enter a new search within 12 seconds) + (users who now only spend a minute or two on a site that historically had 40 minute user sessions) does it take for Google's algorithm to pass a threshold where it classifies a great site as "worse than it used to be" and start dropping its ranking...
posted by protorp at 1:46 PM on March 10, 2022
The unanswerable question is, how many (users who click a high-ranking search result but then come back and click another link or enter a new search within 12 seconds) + (users who now only spend a minute or two on a site that historically had 40 minute user sessions) does it take for Google's algorithm to pass a threshold where it classifies a great site as "worse than it used to be" and start dropping its ranking...
posted by protorp at 1:46 PM on March 10, 2022
One note about the example site: At least in Chrome on Android, it's impossible to swipe up to get past the second section. Others offered commentary on this UX's SEO, so I don't have anything to add to the primary question here, but from the standpoint of usability, it's awful. I had to tap on one of the tiny dots to move past the second section. If I had lower vision or lower motor skills, using that interface would be impossible on my mobile device. Moreover, for folks who are sensitive to motion in their visual field, the faux "rolling" motion of the animation seems potentially problematic, for little gain. I have nothing against card-based layouts or single-page sites with anchor links, but there are some super problematic issues, especially for accessibility, with the implementation on this site. The same would apply to any other kind of parallax effect on a similar site, even without the specific motion design this one uses or the bug with the second section. (Heavy parallax effects also aren't such a new trend anymore and could make the site look dated, if not now, then eventually.)
posted by limeonaire at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
Moreover, for folks who are sensitive to motion in their visual field, the faux "rolling" motion of the animation seems potentially problematic
Can confirm. This style of site is really awful for me, and I won't engage with them unless I *absolutely have to*.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:22 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Can confirm. This style of site is really awful for me, and I won't engage with them unless I *absolutely have to*.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:22 AM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Google doesn't disclose the details of their page ranking algorithm.
Therefore, no one (including snake-oil-shilling "SEO experts") actually knows for sure how Google will rank any given page.
My understanding (as a longtime web developer, though I'm not an SEO specialist) is that the appearance of your pages is much less important than:
– the structure of your HTML
– the text content
– the overall URL structure of your site
– fast page load times
– high-quality inbound links
– technical amenities that help Google to crawl and understand your site, such as meta tags and a sitemap.xml file
– avoiding content that appears elsewhere on the web (this makes Google suspicious that you're just mirroring another site to earn ad revenue)
Google themselves provide an SEO guide, which seems to support all of this.
It's possible to comply with these guidelines with almost any visual design.
Although, you probably will be penalized if your site has:
– text that doesn't contrast sufficiently with the background
– poor accessibility practices
– a lot of very small text
But that's just a guess.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:48 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Therefore, no one (including snake-oil-shilling "SEO experts") actually knows for sure how Google will rank any given page.
My understanding (as a longtime web developer, though I'm not an SEO specialist) is that the appearance of your pages is much less important than:
– the structure of your HTML
– the text content
– the overall URL structure of your site
– fast page load times
– high-quality inbound links
– technical amenities that help Google to crawl and understand your site, such as meta tags and a sitemap.xml file
– avoiding content that appears elsewhere on the web (this makes Google suspicious that you're just mirroring another site to earn ad revenue)
Google themselves provide an SEO guide, which seems to support all of this.
It's possible to comply with these guidelines with almost any visual design.
Although, you probably will be penalized if your site has:
– text that doesn't contrast sufficiently with the background
– poor accessibility practices
– a lot of very small text
But that's just a guess.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:48 PM on March 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:11 AM on March 10, 2022 [3 favorites]