Infinite scroll is becoming increasing popular among websites today. Websites such as facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have implemented infinite scroll for their new feed pages for both their desktop and mobile websites. Since I’m in SEO consulting, many people have asked me whether or not infinite scroll effects SEO or not, so I decided to write on blog post on it.
Even though infinite scroll may seem an attractive enhancement to your website, be forewarned; it is often complicated to implement, and is not always favored by users. Infinite scroll has both advantages and disadvantages from a usability and SEO perspective.
Advantages of infinite scroll
- Retains visitors on one page, allowing them to view lots of content without a page refresh.
- Can improve load time (page speed) for pages that have lots of content.
Disadvantages of infinite scroll
- If not done correctly, it can affect how search engines crawl (or don’t crawl) your website.
- It makes it extremely difficult for users to view the footer.
- There is no permalink to a specific section of the page.
- If not properly optimized, pages with lots of content can soak up lots of browser memory.
Optimizing Infinite Scroll For SEO
Infinite scroll pages are coded in either Javascript and/or Ajax. These programming languages, search engines have trouble reading. Therefore, the best practice for web developers is to use progressive enhancement, which means allowing all visitors to be able to use the sites basic functionality of a website independent on their browser, but at the same time offer an enhanced version for users with up-to date browser. On that token, when coding infinite scroll make sure your users can navigate to your paginated pages with JavaScript turned off. Once you have links to your paginated content, to make sure it properly optimized read my previous post on optimizing pagination. In brief, make sure that you use rel=”prev” rel=”next”, and append the page number to the Title tag (starting on page 2).
Infinite Scroll Plugins
- 10 jquery infinite scroll plugins
- Infinite scroll plugin for wordpress
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SEO Consultant – Shimon Sandler
The Effect Infinite scroll has on SEO
