Infinite Scrolling on Publisher Sites - is VentureBeat's implementation really SEO-friendly?
-
I've just begun a new project auditing the site of a news publisher. In order to increase pageviews and thus increase advertising revenue, at some point in the past they implemented something so that as many as 5 different articles load per article page. All articles are loaded at the same time and from looking in Google's cache and the errors flagged up in Search Console, Google treats it as one big mass of content, not separate pages. Another thing to note is that when a user scrolls down, the URL does in fact change when you get to the next article.
My initial thought was to remove this functionality and just load one article per page. However I happened to notice that VentureBeat.com uses something similar.
They use infinite scrolling so that the other articles on the page (in a 'feed' style) only load when a user scrolls to the bottom of the first article. I checked Google's cached versions of the pages and it seems that Google also only reads the first article which seems like an ideal solution. This obviously has the benefit of additionally speeding up loading time of the page too.
My question is, is VentureBeat's implementation actually that SEO-friendly or not.
VentureBeat have 'sort of' followed Google's guidelines with regards to how to implement infinite scrolling https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html by using prev and next tags for pagination https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en. However isn't the point of pagination to list multiple pages in a series (i.e. page 2, page 3, page 4 etc.) rather than just other related articles?
Here's an example - http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/11/facebooks-cto-explains-social-networks-10-year-mission-global-connectivity-ai-vr/
Would be interesting to know if someone has dealt with this first-hand or just has an opinion.
Thanks in advance!
Daniel
-
Totally agreed, Daniel! I'd also say it's our job to set expectations and be clear about when something is a test vs when something will more than likely work. Consulting is all about setting expectations!
-
Thanks a lot for your thoughts on this John. Really appreciate you taking the time to look into it.
You make a great point about not always copying competitors without testing first. If it's rolled out on such a wide scale, it's always going to be a hard case to put to the client knowing that they're going to lose out in the short-term when it comes to advertising revenue but regardless, I think it's our job as SEOs to first and foremost propose the most SEO-friendly implementation possible.
-
This is actually a really interesting question. I looked at their category pages (eg http://venturebeat.com/tag/ar-vr-weekly/) and those seem to be set up correctly to handle infinite scroll as it sends the search engines to the next page.
I've not come across this with infinite scroll on articles, though. I'm sure they've tested it extensively to figure out the best way to send search engines to future articles, but who really knows if it's being effective. If it's still there, I'd assume that they've seen positive signs but it is definitely a non-standard implementation of rel-next/prev!
This does bring up a good point about copying/not copying a competitor's strategy. They have this implemented, but would it work for your own site/business? Maybe, but maybe not. We can't be sure until we test it ourselves (or speak with someone at VentureBeat who wants to share their learnings :-)). If you know when it was rolled out you could benchmark there and look at SEMrush or another tool to see their organic visibility and from there draw at least some correlation, if not causation.
Thanks for flagging this up! It's cool to see.
-
IT depends on application and other design aspects.
I have seen websites that implement the same thing and like morons keep a never accessible footer there as well... you have no idea how impossible it was to get to the social bar/links at the bottom.
You have to think of the user experience to be honest, while there may be good technical reasons for such a design, you must in the end consider what the user goes through and wants to get out of. A/B testing these kinds of things would not hurt either.
But honestly only "feeds" should be this way. Facebook feed, twitter feed, news feed and even then applications should be considered with care.
Disclosure: I personally hate this behavior by default... basically the only place I find it acceptable is on facebook and twitter.
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
-
What is the proper URL length? in seo
i learned that having 50 to 60 words in a url is ok and having less words is preferable by google. but i would like to know that as i am gonna include keywords in the urls and i am afraid it will increase the length. is it gonna slighlty gonna hurt me? my competitors have 8 characters domain url and keywords length of 13 and my site has 15 character domain url and keywords length of 13 which one will be prefered by google.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | calvinkj0 -
Surely this cannot be a good SEO technique?
I have a client whose competitor has great positions in Google, and a quick look at the meta data revealed this (I removed the company name): I'd love some opinions on this. My gut feel tells me this is spammy. But all my client sees is that this site is on page 1! ~Caro
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Caro-O0 -
Negative SEO Click Bot Lowering My CTR?
I am questioning whether one of our competitors is using a click bot to do negative SEO on our CTR for our industry's main term. Is there any way to detect this activity? Background: We've previously been hit by DoS attacks from this competitor, so I'm sure their ethics/morals wouldn't prevent them from doing negative SEO. We sell an insurance product that is only offered through broker networks (insurance agents) not directly by the insurance carriers themselves. However, our suspect competitor (another agency) and insurance carriers are the only ones who rank on the 1st page for our biggest term. I don't think the carrier sites would do very well since they don't even sell the product directly (they have pages w/ info only) Our site and one other agency site pops onto the bottom of page one periodically, only to be bumped back to page 2. I fear they are using a click bot that continuously bounces us out of page 1...then we do well relatively to the other pages on page 2 and naturally earn our way back to page 1, only to be pushed back to page 2 by the negative click seo...is my theory. Is there anything I can do to research whether my theory is right or if I'm just being paranoid?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheDude0 -
Non Manual penalties, should I trash my site?
My URL is: www.adserve.com.au I get no traffic from google and I am convinced that I have penalties from the links that point to my page. I have written to google previously and they told me that there are no manual penalties on the site. I give up... I am shelving my ENTIRE brand and starting again with a new site, http://www.trusignage.com, I do not want to do this but... If I do a search for
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AdAdam
"Using and implementing the AdServe digital menu board system couldn’t be easier! Just get any screen installed by a tradesman or electrician, plug the digital menu board device" two pages from within my site come up but my homepage does not, it comes up when you click on "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed" A search for
"The AdServe system comprises of only one tiny component that can plug directly into the HDMI port of a screen. Traditional digital signage systems require drilling into walls, running cables, a bunch of valuable space and the installation of several pieces of costly"
Brings up another 2 pages from my site, when clicking on "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed."
My homepage does not even come up... but the homepage of my new site http://www.trusignage.com comes up. My new site is at http://www.trusignage.com there is only 2 pages of duplicate content, the about us and the buy now page.
Is google going to penalise my new site? I WILL NOT DO ANY SEO, only on page......... I wont hire any SEO firm at all. My old site has a few great links to it
http://www.sixteen-nine.net/2013/06/24/android-digital-signage-closer-adserve/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/adserve-digital-signage
I also have many of my REAL youtube videos that link to my site, maybe about 15
If I 301 redirect my penalised site to my new one am I just poisoning my new site as well? I could get the links changed instead. I will have to keep my old site www.adserve.com.au as I have customers who go to that site to lookup my contact details for support etc. will google see the same phone number and address etc and think I am trying to fill google up with duplicate websites? I would really prefer to keep www.adserve.com.au for Australian clients and usewww.trusignage.com for international clients, if the site layout is the same but all of the site passes copyscape then will I get hurt by duplicate content?
Google is ruining me.. I have no money to spend on adwords right now. I have a new highly inovative software product that has taken almost 2 years to develop and I think I deserve more than 4 visits per month. My actual business has been around for 7 years.
I invented SaaS digital signage in 2007 http://youtu.be/-YpyjLALoBU find me some web based digital signage system that was around prior to 2010?
This is me and my product http://youtu.be/ClXSiIA5DRY
Why should my site be treated as trash by google? I have in the past employed a SEO firm and if I search for "If you are looking for the top provider of digital signage in Australia, visit today" I find 70 absolute crap links to my site. I have disvowed them, there must be more links somewhere but I have no money or time to chase down site owners to remove them when I do not even know if I can get them all and have no guarantee that this will even help.. So bottom line, do I need to junk my www.adserve.com.au site? There is no getting away from what some SEO company has spammed in the past?
And again, using a tool to hunt down these spam links and try to get them removed will tie up my own time that needs to be spent on developing my software and I have no cash to pay people to do this for me. [edited by staff because line breaks weren't showing]0 -
New Site Structure
Greetings SEOmoz Team and Users, I need some advise, our site has more products to offer so I am try to optimize the index for a general term and each page product for it's own main keyword. Our site offers accommodation such apartments, hotels and vacation rentals so this is my structure: Index: Main Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Site name(brand name) Page Product 1: Main Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Site name (brand name) Page Product 2: Main Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Site name (brand name) Also can I use the brand name at the end of title tag with separate words ? example: londonescape or london escape or londonescape.net London Apartments | short term london apartments | London Escape or London Apartments | short term london apartments | LondonEscape I think ''London Escape'' is better because has more popularity. Looking forward to hear from you. Thanks, Giuseppe
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WorldEscape0 -
Blog commenting - dos and don'ts
Dear Community, I'm getting into blog commenting heavily now for the relationships I'm building with other bloggers. I think the relationships I will build with these other influencers will be helpful. But I'm concerned that Google may penalize my site if I have a lot of links coming from blog commenting. If I sense that a blog is spammy, obviously I stay away. I've also noticed that a number of CommentLuv sites include a link to my latest blog post, and that has helped me greatly in promoting my posts and building readership. I am also interested in the follow links I get from it, but concerned in that regard that (1) Google won't count those follow links (won't pass page rank) and (2) Google will penalize me for some reason or in some way. What does everyone think about this approach of blog commenting, and in particular, including posting some comments on CommentLuv blogs. Thanks! Mike
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Publishing Press Releases after Google Panda 2.5
For the past few years I have been publish press releases on my site for a number of business. I have high traffic on my site. I noticed that with the Google Panda 2.5 update PRNewswire.com dropped visibility by 83%. Should I stay away from publishing press releases now? Does Google consider Press Releases to be "content scraping" since multiple sources are publishing the release?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss2 -
Competitors have local "mirror" sites
I have noticed that some of my competitors have set up "mirror" homepages set up for different counties, towns, or suburbs. In one case the mirror homepages are virtually identical escept for the title and in the other case about half of the content id duplicate and the other half is different. both of these competors have excellent rankings and traffic. I am surprised about these results, does anyone care to comment about it and is this a grey hat technique that is likely to be penalized eventually. thx Diogenes
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0