How Infinite Scroll Affects SEO – Infinite scrolling is an alternative to pagination, which is a popular way to load and display content on a website.
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Infinite Scroll Affects SEO
This mechanism is needed to improve user comfort when moving between pages. Thanks to this, you do not need to click on the links of the following pages, and to view the content, it is enough to wait for the full load.
A very convenient solution for website users, which is not exactly liked by Google’s search robots. How does infinite scrolling affect a website’s SEO?
Benefits of Infinite Scroll
The biggest benefit of infinite scrolling is definitely speed and convenience. It is considered a more user-friendly solution than sequential clicks, as each click increases the page load timeout.
A long manual, article, or any other text-based content will definitely have a better UX when it is in the form of one long block than if it is split into several separate pages or screens.
Infinite Scroll is a particularly relevant solution in the era of mobile devices. Using gestures is, after all, more intuitive for a phone or tablet user than having to press a page number, especially since such a number can be really tiny and extremely inconvenient.
It is easy to see that infinite scroll requires less user effort and involves much simpler actions. No issue with how you look at it, it’s excellent.
What are the disadvantages of infinite scrolling?
But let’s be objective: any technical solution in website development has its advantages and disadvantages. And the traditional pagination will somehow outperform the newfangled Infinite Scroll.
First of all, this solution does not guarantee that the display of dynamically readable content will be correctly interpreted by Google crawlers.
Sometimes it turns out that only the first page loaded is visible in the search results, and each subsequent page will be called by interacting with JavaScript code. Keep in mind that Google bots don’t perform these interactions, so they can’t see the next rendered pages – they still have the same URL.
Incorrectly performed scrolling negatively affects the speed and performance of content loading. An Internet service using such a solution will take longer to load. As you know, this time is one of the most important factors determining the bounce rate.
Heavy content, especially graphics coming from one site, can significantly limit the resources of a mobile device, so some users simply close the page, stopping communication with your business.
For online stores, a huge downside to infinite scrolling is the inability to bookmark a location.
A shopper who has reached a product or photo of interest will have to re-scroll the page to find the space they left behind. This is definitely a serious problem that is annoying and reduces engagement.
Another major disadvantage of infinite scrolling is the lack of a footer. The footer of a site usually contains the content that visitors are looking for, such as contact details, social media links, or an account number.
After implementing infinite scroll on a site, it is better to place important elements in the top or sidebar or use a sticky footer (footer).
Infinite scrolling and pagination
Pagination and infinite scrolling are two of the most popular methods for displaying and loading content on websites. Pagination is paging, and infinite scroll provides scrolling without pagination.
The use of pagination requires the user to navigate between successive pages by specifying a page number or by navigating.
This technique breaks the content into subpages – the most famous example is the Google search engine (page one, page two…)
Of course, the website developer must consider all the pros and cons of each of these solutions. The decision should be made depending on the nature of the site and the way the content is delivered to users.
Impact of Infinite Scroll on Website SEO
Sites that use infinite scroll are a big SEO problem at this stage. This is mainly due to indexing, since Google does not allow JavaScript to be loaded to display the entire content of the page.
However, the owner can help the crawler a little so that it can properly identify and index all of your site’s content.
Owners of infinite scroll on the page should use a proven method. Correct positioning will be ensured if pagination is created at the same time. Then Google robots will cover every element that is associated with it.
SEO requires pages with infinite scrolling on component pages that are visible and accessible even when JavaScript is disabled.
Read Also: 7 Best Free SEO Plugins WordPress
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Undoubtedly, the infinite scroll option is worth using to increase UX and conversions, although, of course, not on every page. This is the best solution for sites with a lot of images, content or videos. But not necessarily the best solution for you