Dedicated landing pages vs responsive web design
-
I've been doing some research into web design and page layout as my company is considering a re-design. However, we have come to an argument around responsive webdesign vs SEO.
The argument is around me (SEO specialist) arguing that I want dedicated pages for all my content as it's good for SEO since it focuses keywords and content properly, and it still adheres to good user journeys (providing it's done correctly), and my web designer arguing that mobile traffic is on the rise (which it is I know) so we should have more content under 1 URL and use responsive web design so that users can just scroll through content instead of having to keep be direct to different pages.
What do I do...
I can't find any blogs, questions, or whiteboards that really touches on this topic, so can anyone advise me on whether I should:
- Create dedicated landing pages for each bit of content which is good for SEO and taking users on a journey around my site
OR
- All content that is relative to a landing page, put all under that one URL (e.g. "About us" may have info on the company, our team, our history, careers) and allow people to scroll down what could be a very long page on any device, but may effect SEO as I can't focus keywords/content under one URL properly, so it may effect rankings.
Any advice SEO and user experience whizzes out there?
-
My agency's website is ranked #1 on Google for small business marketing in a major US city. We get a lot of search traffic, primarily on our home page and contact page. The home page features a couple paragraphs about our agency and a video. Of course there is some information in the footer. With that being said, our website and company has been very successful generating business without lengthy pages. Although I enjoy building long, informative home pages, I don't necessarily know that it guarantees better SEO results (as our company has been ranked #1 for a while with a very minimalistic setup).
This is just my own personal opinion, but I think it is generally better to give the user important (quality) information up front and try to reel them in from there. If they want to browse around your site and learn more then you've done your job. If you're really good then maybe they skip straight to the contact page and shoot you an email or call you.
I've ranked multiple websites #1 on Google for fairly competitive keywords in large cities. Very few of them were infinite scroll. With that being said I don't think there is anything wrong with that style of design (I make a lot of websites like that, too).
I think you should do what ever you think is more visually appealing and works with your content. I think depending on the situation either could work well. Best of luck!
-
Hi Viriginia. Here's a blog post discussing this as well and arguing for the design choice of combining the elements into one page: http://moz.com/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign. Note the result to her test, "The results were the same and now Google is showing the page for 3 different anchor texts. It means there's another exception of the "first link counts" rule and you can put multiple links on document A to document B and Google will count all of their anchor texts." So I'd be a little less worried about having multiple pages per content piece and instead focus on the page style that delivers the best user experience, conversion rate, and content grouping.
Another thing you can look at to help you decide would be your current / past analytics. How many pages does your average visitor view per session? How much time do they spend on site? If they're not visiting very many pages, going beyond that number might limit the exposure of those pages. If you split test the multi-page design versus the single-page design you might find even better answers. Cheers!
-
Yes. I see exactly what you mean. I think that you can do it the way that you want and still have the responsive design. I think that accordion style menus would help the user experience. That is how I shrunk the fly out menus on this site.
The content and the responsive design are very important parts of SEO. I don't think you have to change your content at all to make a responsive design work. I wouldn't change your content, I would just play around with the menu styles so that you can find the one that works best for your content on a mobile device.
-
Yeah, the way you've done it with each bit of content under different URLs for the About us section e.g. /meet-the-team, /roof-chicago, /testimonials/ is my argument. You've done it the way I want to do it - creating dedicated landing pages for each bit about you, not just shoving it under one /about-us URL.
Here's our current About Us landing page, you'll see what I mean http://www.seriousideas.com/about-us/ - we have it broken down into lots of little bits which you can jump to if you didn't want to scroll --> Meet the team, our history, sectors, clients. I'm arguing that I wouldn't have all of those one URL, I would split them up like this:
/meet-the-team
/our-history
/sectors
/our-clients
But still use responsive web design on the site so that it is an easier experience for the user.
Do you see what I mean?
-
I see what you are saying about duplicate content. What I was suggesting is keeping the pages the length you want them, while having a responsive design. There is no reason why you couldn't have multiple pages with shorter content on a responsive design. Maybe I am just not seeing the full picture.
This is a responsive design I created for a service site a few years ago. The content on the pages was designed to target key terms of course, but there are many pages for about us, the team, and what we do. Is this what you are looking to do?
-
Aww I think I unfairly represented my web designers argument, I think he was more playing devils advocate than saying my way is wrong. But yes, your second comment RE: better UX was his point.
I see what you're saying, but I wouldn't do both... that could potentially lead to duplicate content and rubbish user journey if some pages are maahoosive and some point people to different areas of the site.
We don't sell products, we're a service based company (marketing agency). So all our content is around what services we offer, as well as having a blog and some research papers. But ultimately we're trying to promote our marketing services to help businesses connect with their audience better.
-
After reading this again, I think i have to argue your designers point. I think what he is trying to say is that having more content on one page will optimally offer a better UX. This is because they won't have to click so many times to find exactly what they are looking for.
I see that point. What kind of site do you have? Is it strictly content or is it an Ecommerce site?
-
I would say do them both. There is no reason to limit your landing pages in a responsive design. The purpose of a responsive design is to give the user the same experience on a mobile device and a desktop. It prevents losing functionality and information.
You might have to use some accordion function to hide some of the content in order to view products. If you have no products, then you will want as many pages as you can. The size of your site is important.
I am not sure why your designer is telling you that you can't have as many pages as you want and still have responsive design. Maybe it is time to get a new designer?
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
-
My news site not showing in "In the news" list on Google Web Search
I got a news website (www.tapscape.com) which is 6 years old and has been on Google News since 2012. However, whenever I publish a news article, it never shows up "In the news" list on Google Web Search. I have already added the schema.org/NewsArticle on the website and have checked it if it's working or not on Google structured data testing tool. I see everything shows on on the structured data testing tool. The site already has a news sitemap (http://www.tapscape.com/news-sitemap.xml) and has been added to Google webmaster tools. News articles show perfectly fine in the News tab, but why isn't the articles being shown on "In the news" list on the Google web search? My site has a strong backlink background already, so I don't think I need to work on the backlinks. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, and how can I get it to the news articles on "In the news" list. Below is a screenshot that I have attached to this question to help you understand what I mean to say. 1qoArRs
Web Design | | hakhan2010 -
Duplicate Content Home Page http Status Code Query
Hi All, We have just redone a site wide url migration (from old url structure to new url structure) and set up our 301's etc but have this one issue whereby I don't know if' it's a problem of not. We have 1 url - www.Domain.co.uk**/** which has been set up to 301 redirect back to www.domain.co.uk However, when I check the server response code, it comes back as 200. So although it appears to visually 301 redirect if I put the url in the tool bar, the status code says different. Could this be seen as a potential duplicate home page potentially and if so , any idea how I could get around it if we can't solve the root cause of it. This is on a cake php framework, thanks PEte
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue
I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform. The site is built with Joomla! How can I rectify this situation? The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls... Is it the ECWID platform? I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Transitioning to a dynamic home page. Impact on SEO?
Home page redesign advice, please. We're a growing college textbook publishing company; a unique one in that we publish everything under an open license. Our homepage www.flatworldknowledge.com has a solid page score (80), and since our product serves several different customers/audiences -- students, faculty, bookstores -- we're transitioning to a dynamic home page approach. Returning instructors will be served a personalized faculty page, returning students a student oriented page featuring the books they've most recently accessed, and first time/anon visitors will receive a more neutral welcome page until we know more about them. Pros, cons with this change to a dynamic homepage? What should we be thinking about/concerned about from an SEO perspective? How do you address title tags? Will this approach dilute page authority? Thanks all!
Web Design | | JasonBilog0 -
Panda and Penquin Fall - Could HTML Design an Issue?
Hi, We were hit hard by Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012. Then Penguin came along and slapped us down a little farther on April 24th. White hat SEO for 13 years on the site. I have been trying to discover the reason we got hit so hard, to date 90% down. We ae wiped. I have a couple of keywords still #2 and #3 and we see up and down changes in Google webmaster tools, i.e. a keyword is supposedly up 50 points then another down 50. All other 150 keywords that we used to rank on the first page for are not even showing up. I have a person that is about to do a full link analysis but since we never went after links I just never had the feeling that is where our problem is at, but definitely going to explore it. The reason for my post is that last night I spoke with an SEO person that has some pretty good credentials (9 years experience and works currently at large online marketing company with seo with clients like Honda) and he was nice enough to just take a quick look at the site. He said he saw nothing really wrong and did not think that we were hit for any of the normal issues people are listing, i.e. duplicate content, backlinks. His first impression was that we were knocked down because the site is "hard to index". He said the site still uses tables and a lot of our Doc Statements were for HTML 4.01 from 1999. As we all know, there are 'many' experts in this industry. So I wanted a little feedback from the community. Our main site was built in Dreamweaver using tables. We do have a Wordpress blog that is very small and just now posting to add fresh content. (posts seem to rank pretty good, this is why I thought, you know he may be right) Would an older site be penalized like this for using tables? What would you do at this stage if you had a site that is not recovering? I have now reached panic mode and have to do something, just not sure of the next step. I will be happy to post the URL if anyone wants to help with advice. Thanks,
Web Design | | Force7
Force70 -
Duplicate Page Content
Currently experiencing duplicate pages for all hotel pages. What would be recommendation to fix the pop up pages that uses javascript? | http://www.solmelia.com/hoteles/espana/tenerife/redlevel-at-gran-melia-palacio-de-isora/en/visor.html?pest=fotos http://www.solmelia.com/hoteles/espana/tenerife/redlevel-at-gran-melia-palacio-de-isora/en/visor.html?pest=localizacion http://www.solmelia.com/hoteles/espana/tenerife/redlevel-at-gran-melia-palacio-de-isora/en/visor.html?pest=panorama http://www.solmelia.com/hoteles/espana/tenerife/redlevel-at-gran-melia-palacio-de-isora/en/visor.html?pest=tourVisual |
Web Design | | Melia0 -
Crawl Budget vs Canonical
Got a debate raging here and I figured I'd ask for opinions. We have our websites structured as site/category/product This is fine for URL keywords, etc. We also use this for breadcrumbs. The problem is that we have multiple categories into which a category fits. So "product" could also be at site/cat1/product
Web Design | | Highland
site/cat2/product
site/cat3/product Obviously this produces duplicate content. There's no reason why it couldn't live under 1 URL but it would take some time and effort to do so (time we don't necessarily have). As such, we're applying the canonical band-aid and calling it good. My problem is that I think this will still kill our crawl budget (this is not an insignificant number of pages we're talking about). In some cases the duplicate pages are bloating a site by 500%. So what say you all? Do we just simply do canonical and call it good or do we need to take into account the crawl budget and actually remove the duplicate pages. Or am I totally off base and canonical solves the crawl budget issue as well?0