Does Google look at page design
-
Hi everybody,
At the moment i'm creating several webshops and websites with the same layout, so visitors can recognize the websites are from the same company. But i was wondering: Does google look at the layout of a webpage that it's not a copy of another website?
This because loads of website have the same wordpress/joomla templates etc, or doesn't this effect rankingpositions?
Thank you,
-
Hi Cyrus,
Maybe I wasn't very clear in my previous comment; I know using website templates on multiple domains won't cause you to get a penalised by Google, but the article that was linked to said, Google has changed the algorithm to look at the layout of a web page and this didn't make sense to me.
This is why I mentioned changing your on-page optimisation to ensure you at least have different content on different domains that use the same template.
Slightly off topic, but I wanted to say that I thought your White Board Friday was really good (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/stop-optimizing-and-start-creating-whiteboard-friday), you covered a good topic and explained it really well.
-
Hi Ben,
There's no evidence that I'm aware of that Google penalizes sites for using duplicate templates. It would be the same thing as using the same template on 1000 pages of your blog - you aren't penalized as long as the majority of the 1000 pages have unique content. It works the same way across multiple domains.
-
Google can determine the screen resolution your website supports and can then calculate the contents above the fold through some predefined criteria. So it has nothing to do with the screen resolution of the end user. To better understand how Google do this, check the browser size tool in Google labs. The concept of above the fold used by Google is to actually filter out those web pages on which ads outweigh the contents as it leads to poor user expedience..
-
I am not sure that whether Google checks for the design of the website for its ranking or not and if it checks then how does it count ? But one thing i can say that it counts the user experience. If you think that your design is providing a good user experience it is OK but at the same time if you have same template as other website have and a user visits both the website he would be confused and it is not a good user experience. So decision is up to you what you wants to give your user confusion or clear Precision.
-
I'd also like to add that the webmasters blog may give some true facts about what Google's uses to rank sites in its algorithm, but if you stop and think, Google have always tried to be very protective about telling us what causes a site to rank well in the SERPs. They may be reporting false information on the blog to keep us all on our toes, but that's my cynical side talking.
-
I fear we may be deviating from the question a little here, as the main crux of the debate was whether Google, and that quote was in a comment from a user, not as part of the article, so its questionable whether that's exactly what was said and whether it was said by Matt Cutts at all.
In terms of Google looking at site layout as part of their algorithm that article linked to above contains the following, "In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result."
Its a good article, but it does make me question how Google can possibly use site layout in its algorithm for the SERP results. There are template sites out there that may have a wealth of unique and highly valuable content in page and above the fold, so would Google be marking those pages down because some other sites use the same template?
I go back to my original point about ensuring the on-page SEO and layout of the page content is unique and different from other sites that share the same look and feel just to ensure that its semantically different. Maybe change the order of elements (paragraphs, images, lists etc) and maybe add in additional content to avoid any possible penalties.
-
Guys. Here is some definitive stuff from Matt Cutts from Google (if you can say he really ever gives us anything definitive) about "above the fold"
"…sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward."
If you want to read the entire post, here is the link......
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
-
Hi Himanshu,
Can you explain your answer a little more please, as I don't understand how or why Google would be able to check content "above the fold" because visitors have a variety of monitor resolutions so the fold will be in a different location every time.
It was my understanding that the concept of "above the fold" has been redundant for some time as people intuitively scroll down the page. If anything you should be penalised for stuffing all your relevant content at the top of your pages, because it would be borderline spammy and the Panda update was bought in to reduce spammy sites.
In terms of the design I agree (partially) with Himanshu. Google won't penalise you for using the same template but the content must be significantly different across your sites that use the same template to avoid cross domain duplication of content.
-
Google wont penalize you for duplicate web design. But it does look at the layout of a web page to check how much content is above the fold using page layout algorithm. So while designing a layout make sure that you have considerable amount of contents above the fold. Web design doesn't effect ranking position directly but indirectly it can effect because of high bounce rate and other user metrics.
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
-
The particular page cannot be indexed by Google
Hello, Smart People!
On-Page Optimization | | Viktoriia1805
We need help solving the problem with Google indexing.
All pages of our website are crawled and indexed. All pages, including those mentioned, meet Google requirements and can be indexed. However, only this page is still not indexed.
Robots.txt is not blocking it.
We do not have a tag "nofollow"
We have it in the sitemap file.
We have internal links for this page from indexed pages.
We requested indexing many times, and it is still grey.
The page was established one year ago.
We are open to any suggestions or guidance you may have. What else can we do to expedite the indexing process?1 -
Unsolved Should I combine pages?
Hi, Im not sure of the correct route to take here... We are a training provider and I manage the website. The main course offered is the transport manager CPC. Currently, I have a "catch all" landing page which links to each different course option: Landing page > Classroom Online Self study Distance learning The main keyword revolves around "transport manager cpc" I want searchers to land on the online page is they search "online transport manager CPC" for example but I think its confusing Google. I'm wondering if I should de-index the store pages (although some perform very well) and increase the content on the main landing page to rank for every related keyword on that page. Initially, I wanted to devalue the landing page in favor of the store pages but I'm unsure if that's the right way to go. I've stripped out the bulk of the keywords and content and shifted it to each individual page. but as above, Im now unsure if that's the right route to take. Any help would be greatly appreciated 👍 Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dunbavand
Rich0 -
Too many page links warning... but each link has canonical back to main page? Is my page OK?
The Moz crawl warns me many of my pages have too many links, like this page http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting ...... has 269 links but many of the links are like this /jobs/jobtitles/Accounting?k=&w=3&hiddenLocationID=463170&depth=2 and are used to refine search criteria.... when you click on those links they all have a canonical link back to http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting Is my page being punished for this? Do I have to put "no follow" tags on every link I do not want the bots to follow and if I do so is Roger (moz bot) not going to count this as a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Webjobz0 -
On page SEO Strategy / What pages to use?
What is the best page to use for targeting your hard to rank keywords? The keyword phrases in question here are "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing", "Custom Aquariums", & "Acrylic Aquariums" As of right now we have created 3 separate pages for each one of these keyword phrases. http://seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums for "Custom Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums/acrylic-aquariums/ for "Acrylic Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/services/acrylic-tank-manufacturing/ for "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing" Or are we better of using the home page http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/ for the our main hard to rank for terms. Generally speaking I would think more people will link to our home page.
On-Page Optimization | | SeaQuatic0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hi, I did a SEOmoz campaign and got results today, One of the results is Too "Many On-Page Links" when i am drilling down, i see that that's include inside links. for example, i sale food, i have my main department window - inside i have 30 products - each product is linked to a detailed page about the product. so automatically i have 30 links - not including all the others in this page, and i easily get over 100 and even sometimes 200 is this a big issue? does it damages my SEO? If yes, is there a way to write the HTML in a way that internal links like that wont be counted? Thank you SEOWiseUs
On-Page Optimization | | iivgi0 -
Would I be safe canonicalizing comments pages on the first page?
We are building comment pages for an article site that live on a separate URL from the article (I know this is not ideal, but it is necessary). Each comments page will have a summary of the article at the top. Would I be safe using the first page of comments as the canonical URL for all subsequent comment pages? Or could I get away with using the actual article page as the canonical URL for all comment pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0