Not All Web Design Trends are Good for SEO
Summary
Understand potential conflicts between popular web design trends and effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.
Over the years, web designs have changed. With majority of people using smartphones and tablets, not all information has to be ‘above-the-fold’ anymore. People don’t mind scrolling – it has become a natural way of life to do so.
While you may be ready to join in the bandwagon and have a website designed with the trendiest features, think again. Not all that’s popular can have a positive effect on SEO and online marketing. There are several things to consider, especially when you plan to market your website. After all, you have to market your website, right? What’s a website for if you don’t bring in the traffic through digital marketing?
Here are the top three trends you may want to think twice … or thrice before using:
1. The Sleek & Clean Hamburger Menu
Notice the 3 stacked lines in websites, which when tapped, will show the navigation menu? That’s the Hamburger. While it does the job in removing clutter especially when you’re aiming for a minimalistic design, it has a terrible impact on SEO. Believe it or not, a lot of people do not know what The Hamburger is. This results to extremely high bounce rates. Next, it reduces discoverability of pages – which is critical for e-commerce sites. Lastly, it is not measurable. You cannot determine where users are clicking, which is a very important information so you know which pages appeal to your audience. As a golden rule, do not compromise discoverability for good looks.
2. The One-Page Site
The one-page website, as the term suggests, is an entire website in just a single page that loads all the information dynamically. A simple click or a tap, a content block will appear. There’s no need for scrolling as everything is basically in that single page. For the user’s end, it is incredibly simple to use because they do not have to sift through multiple pages to find what they are looking for. But on an SEO perspective, this is a nightmare. First of all, these dynamic sites take longer to load and we know that slow loading sites do not look good in Google’s eyes. Next, Google stresses the importance of internal linking. With a one-page site, there are internal zero links. Lastly, search engines take into consideration the number of pages that are indexed. With this design, all that is indexed is just one page – which again, is not good in the eyes of Google.
3. Infinite Scrolling
With all the social media profiles and pages we all go through, infinite scrolling is something our thumbs naturally do on our mobile phones. Since most people browse websites on their smart phones or tablets, even web pages now have an infinite scrolling design. It’s good for end users as all the data is in a single, long page. There is no need to go through several pages. SEO wise, however, it’s a different thing. Too much JavaScript is required for infinite scrolling and we all know that search engine bots cannot crawl nor read through JavaScript. Just like the one-page site mentioned above, there are no pages to be indexed in this type of design. Lastly, it’s also not good for tasks which require a user to take action, thereby affecting conversion.
As you can see, following trends is not usually a good thing. Think again when jumping into what is popular because sometimes, old, tried and tested methods still work best for you and your business.
