Parallax websites - good for SEO?
-
A client of mine is redesigning their site using a vertical Parallax & upon doing some research I've stumbled across Drew Barrymore's site: http://flowerbeauty.com/ - which also uses Parallax.
What I like in particular is that the site changes URLs as you scroll down. If you go direct to one of those URLs you'll notice unique meta data (albeit poorly optimised). All pages are indexed fine in Google (https://www.google.com/#bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=f8873f78dfbb8c5e&q=site:flowerbeauty.com)
I'm just wondering if this is considered ok as the user experience is good and they're not doing anything manipulative, however, there's duplicate content and a potential case of cloaking at hand.
I think this approach may be ok for my client for a product features page or a global office locations page since I can break up the sections nicely and split a really long page featuring a lot of content into separate URLs. Whereas Flower Beauty have done it across the whole site... i.e. one page of HTML = the whole site.
What do you guys think?
-
Hi Woj,
Good luck on your project! I created a board with Seo Parallax Responsive Websites. Please add your project to the board if you get it too work! http://www.pinterest.com/ecumbre/seo-and-parallax-scrolling/
thanks
Carla
-
Hi Carla - Thanks for doing that! I agree, their site is not very SEO friendly. Their big mistake is running the whole site (essentially) from one page. Which mean that every page is duplicate or a duplicate subset of the main set.
We looked at only incorporating a handful of elements from the site (well really only the URL switching as you scroll down & ensuring we have unique content).
For example, we have a parallax /features page which has an overview then each feature as you scroll. If you go direct to /features you get the overview only. If you go direct to /features/feature-1 then you only get info about that feature.
-
Hi Woj,
I know you posted this awhile back but I decided to run flowerbeauty.com through moz's software. It is not SEO friendly. I have the reports if you want to see them. Feel free to PM me and I will send them to you.
Lots of duplicate content
Hope it is not too late
-
We're playing around with a few of the technologies that site uses & will run some experiments. Fun!
-
Evaluate what SEO assets the dynamic URL structure provides to support SEO and which it does not. Carla pointed out some excellent points. But I did notice that there is no rel canonical specified and that the head disappears off the view-source when you get off the home page. I wonder how authorship and publisher could be implemented (less SEO and more visitor engagement, but still something to consider.). If you find that most SEO elements are available in the structure and you can hold rank using those elements, then "perfect" or "complete" SEO structure may not be necessary. Each industry seems to have its own tolerance for how well you can rank when you don't have all SEO elements in place.
-
Hi Woj,
I took a look at the website and did some research. Google is treating each URL differently and the internal pages are ranking. It appears to be SEO friendly and an amazing solution to Parallax scrolling and SEO. However that being said I am not a programmer. I would need to sit down with a programmer to look at some of the code. If you have one on your team these are the questions I would ask him or her.
- How is the URL change activated? Is it done with Ajax? From what I can see, the main navigation is a list and the scrolling activates the jump to a new place in the list. Each list element is a new URL.
- Does the website have an XML sitemap? I do not see one and I would feed this to Google webmaster tools. The site does have a SEO friendly architecture (the titles and metas could be improved a bit) and Google is picking this up
I do think it is ok to dynamically change the URL as you scroll and find it to be a wonderful balance between SEO and Parallax scrolling.
Thanks Carla
-
Hi Carla - thanks for your response. I guess, my main question is related to the specific technique they used in the Flower Beauty site example. Is it ok to dynamically change the URL as you scroll? If you view the source of each URL you get unique meta data... it's a cool technique if it's ok with the SEs, which so far appears to be the case.
-
Hi Woj,
You have got to read my Youmoz post on how to do a SEO friendly parallax scrolling responsive website http://moz.com/ugc/website-design-wars-seo-agencies-vs-web-design-agencies-worldwide-trends
Our project went really well
Feel free to private message me if you need more insights.
-
While Parallax design can be a great experience for users, you will have to take into consideration its SEO consequences and page load speed. When implemented for an entire website, using a one page design will be problematic since you can only have one
tag. Flower Beauty's website solves this problem by loading multiple pages in one page, but at the cost of speed as vagish mentioned. You would also have to take into consideration that parallax design doesn't work well on mobile devices, and a separate mobile site will have to be created in that case.
I would recommend using Parallax design for specific pages only (e.g. product features page). It would load much faster if its just a one page design and you would definitely want to captivate your visitors in the product features page.
Here's a link that may be helpful to you when looking at SEO concerns: http://searchengineland.com/the-perils-of-parallax-design-for-seo-164919
Hope that helps!
-
One issue I found was the speed. Also I don't think I've actually seen any sites ranking highly while using a parallax style theme. I actually built a site with a parallax site for a client (but he didn't care about SEO).
It took 15 seconds to load her site: http://gtmetrix.com/reports/flowerbeauty.com/tVCtPPl3 with nearly 300 HTTP requests. If I remember correctly you can only have 8 HTTP requests running concurrently per domain. These requests can be reduced by better caching and css image sprites.
From an SEO point of view I can't really say, but maybe having a look at lots of similar websites would be useful.
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
-
Wordpress SEO/Tag plugin recommendation for sports (soccer) website
I own a Wordpress website which covers soccer in the DC MD VA area called DMV Soccer http://www.dmvsoccer.com/ We write weekly recaps where we tag a player who has scored a goal or performed well in a game. For each player, obviously, a tag is created. What I'm looking for is a plugin or solution that would allow me to tag a player, but also automatically assign a team to that player so that the team name and player's name are optimized on the individual player's tag page. So if I were to tag George Murphy on a recap, and I assign him to a team, let's say DC United. The tag page would have a title, something like: George Murphy Soccer Player for DC United and the meta description: George Murphy, soccer player from MD who players for DC United archives Or something similar, if that makes sense. Should I skip using tags and instead start assigning each player as a sub-category under each team? I'd like to try to avoid that, because not each category will be based on a player. Any suggestions in terms of existing plugins or other recommendations?
Web Design | | georgetsn1 -
Looking to remove SSL because it is causing very slow website download speeds. Does WP have a plugin that redirects SSL urls to non SSL urls?
After some extended debate with our web development team we are considering dropping the SSL from our website because it is adding almost 2 additional seconds to our download speeds. We know there is a SEO boost from having a SSL but we believe the extended download speeds maybe outweighing the benefit. However we are concerned about the SEO implications of having no method possible of redirect SSL to non SSL webpages. Does anybody know of a Wordpress Plugin that can force redirect SSL urls to non SSL urls?
Web Design | | RosemaryB0 -
Parallax: What am I missing? Is there anything great about it?
It seems like everywhere I turn, people are using parallax themes. Now, with responsive design themes, I understood that change, because google pretty much said to do that. But, I don't see why parallax has gained such popularity. Is there an SEO benefit to it? Are there studies showing it serves much better UX? Etc? Curious and thankful, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What would be the best way to translate my website for international seo?
I am planning on creating a multi language website that targets different countries and would like to know what would be the best way to translate my content from English to multiple different languages (French, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, etc.). I would hire a translator but doing so for all these different languages would be too costly. Using Google translate will leave me with at best a rough translation. What are my other options? Is there a website that can provide me a better translation? Would Fiver be a better/cheaper alternative? Thoughts?
Web Design | | Shawn1240 -
What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?
what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page? My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about. Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google? I'm not really sure. He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users. This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site. I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions. Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Website URL Structures - Which does Google prefer or does it matter?
Which URL structure does google prefer..............OR DOES IT REALLY MATTER? Option A www.example.com/services/service#1 - this is the default that wordpress uses Option B www.example.com/service#1
Web Design | | webestate0 -
Is Facebook like or share better for SEO (social media buttons)
Just wondering whether anybody has experience with this? If Googlebot is able to analyse Facebook activity that is (I'm not entirely sure whether it is...)
Web Design | | McTaggart0 -
Flash and SEO
When I search the seomoz site for "flash and seo" I only see older articles, 2008. Is there anything newer you can point me to for a current discussion on the impact on SEO of flash sites?
Web Design | | panderson3210