How to Make Parallax Format Web Designs More SEO Friendly with jQuery

Even though web design and SEO are intricately related, it is very seldom that SEO experts are included in the web design team from the very start of the project. If SEO experts were present during the initial planning stages, it would have been certain that the site would have been optimized properly and been SEO-friendly. However, the ground realities are quite different from the websites being created keeping only in mind the design considerations and SEO, generally accorded consideration much later. Under these circumstances, websites generally end up being SEO unfriendly and requiring further work to make it visible to the search engines. The problem is compounded much more when the website design is in the parallax format. A quick look at how the parallax website architectures can be made more SEO-friendly.

What Is Parallax Web Design?

It is important to understand what is meant by parallax web design before delving deeper into questioning why it is considered to be bad for search engine optimization and how this apparent deficiency can be corrected to make parallax web design and SEO work together for best search engine rankings.

Parallax designed websites are significantly different from other websites because, in this design format, all the contents of the website are placed on a single page. This means that when a user clicks on the navigation menu to jump to another section, instead of traveling to a new page that opens up, the user is taken to the content, which is already residing on the same page with a simple and fast scroll up or scroll down movement. For example, if the user is on the home page of the website and clicks on ‘About Us” on the navigation menu, he will be able to access the relevant content without leaving the page. As the page scrolls down, the user will discover that the URL has also changed without a new page having being launched and the URL reading domain.com/about us

Different Design Philosophy

The parallax design philosophy is based on the concept of using a lesser number of pages to display more content. Unfortunately, this, clashes with the conventional approach to New York SEO that believes that good ranks depend on increased visibility and increased visibility is only possible when there are distinctly separate pages with their individual URLs. The contradiction, inherent in the different website architectures, has resulted in a common belief that search engine optimization is impractical in parallax web designs.

Why Parallax Web Designs Do Not Support SEO Initiatives

It is important to understand the technical issues that prevent parallax websites from being SEO-friendly. SEO practices demand that the website URL get the maximum possible visibility to the search engine bots. The structure of the URL of a parallax website is such that only the home page URL is visible to the search engines and consequently, only that URL is indexed by the search engines. With all other content URLs being effectively hidden from the search engines, the scope of the SEO is also restricted when compared to the conventional website architecture that involves multiple pages. This is because each of the pages has its unique URL available to be crawled and indexed by the search engines. This means that the higher the number of pages on the website, the better is the search engine visibility and chances for improved page rankings. When the important keywords can be spread over multiple pages, the search engine has a better chance of ranking them leading to an improvement in the site visibility. According to https://www.forbes.com, placing the keywords above the fold is important for effective SEO.

Making Parallax Websites SEO-Friendly

All said and done, even after accepting the limitations of parallax design websites and the conflicting website design philosophies that interfere with SEO, there will still be a demand for parallax websites to be made SEO-friendly. According to SEO experts, there are quite a few tips that can be implemented to make this happen. A test that involved three different topics on the same parallax website conclusively proved that the website could be optimized for search engines. Without going into the details of the test, it was evident that Google was able to distinguish all the three URLs separately and index them.

The technical explanation for the apparent contradiction between SEO theory and practice lies in the way the content has been planned to make it more attractive for the search engines. Three separate sections have been used to present the content in the test example mentioned earlier. While one content has been programmed to be active at all times with it being HTML hard-coded, the other two sections are deemed to be inactive, and jQuery is used to display the content. This method ensures that the search engines do not end up getting confused with duplicate content because with this arrangement there is no chance of any duplication happening with only one active URL. Technically speaking, the browser’s vertical position can be figured out very well by the jQuery script. With it being able to locate very accurately the exact location of the content, the URL of the active section gets pushed to the address bar of the browser being used by the user and is also captured in the browser history. This enables the user to get a better experience of visiting the website, as back and forth navigation across history is simple.

Conclusion

The illustrated method of making one content section active with the rest deemed to be inactive enables website designers to get the best of both the worlds. Now that can have the convenience of parallax website architecture for better performance and also make it easily discoverable by search engines. Clients are now able to get the advantage of smart and crisp websites made possible by parallax design and a boost in page rankings through technical manipulation. The good news is that this method can be adopted for all types of content that need to be accessed by the users of the website, be it the landing page or pages containing infographics. With the right combination of parallax architecture for website design and the inherent capabilities of jQuery, it is now possible for web developers to demolish the myth that parallax web design does not lend itself well to SEO.

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