Many websites and blogs load content on a page by page model. On the other hand, there are few sites which provide infinite scrolling option. Which one is better for SEO? Pagination Vs. Infinite Scrolling – here is my blog on it from SEO point of view.
Normal pagination schemes like using next or newer or previous or 1,2,3,…last, types of links at the bottom of each page of your website or blog is generally known as pagination, while on the other hand, with the help of Ajax and some other latest techniques, some websites load infinite content when you reach the bottom of the page.
Normal discussion among the webmasters is whether using Pagination or the Infinite Scrolling is better from the SEO point of view? I normally prefer Pagination scheme as you can see in my this blog and the Tech Acid blog as well. On the other hand, there are bloggers and webmasters who prefer using Infinite Scrolling only, some of them actually hate using pagination scheme as well.
Pagination Vs. Infinite Scrolling – SEO Point of View!
Normally these are required in Search Results pages, or Category Pages, or List Pages, or Archive section. Generally, to list so many results on a particular page, we can either opt for pagination one or the infinite scrolling one. There are many strategies like those used by SEO services like serpninja. This is just one of them. The concern is that many people think that In this blog post I will let you know which scheme actually works better for the SEO point of view.
It is also true that not many webmasters or bloggers are using the infinite scrolling option on their site, reason being is still unknown to us. Yes, infinite scrolling is mainly used by some social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
One of the most probable reasons why webmasters don’t use infinite scrolling is because of the fact that in this case most of the content remain hidden, and people assume that search engines especially Google, don’t like hidden content.
And then the other fear is whether it will work well on Mobile handsets or not? In the age of when Google is coming up with Mobile Index First technique, how a webmaster can rely on this Infinite Scrolling scheme?
User Experience
From user experience point of view, infinite scrolling is obviously better than the Pagination scheme. Many people don’t prefer clicking on links one by one to lend to the older content. While with infinite scrolling older content loads automatically.
Although search engines these days focus so much on user experience but have you ever reached the bottom of the sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? So sometimes Pagination gives better user experience as well, as there is no end of the infinite scrolling options for bigger sites which has so much of user generated content.
On the other hand with pagination scheme, every page of your site can become reachable within 2-3 clicks of the mouse and you can easily also reach to the footer section of that website. I guess this is one of the most important reasons why people prefer using it on Infinite scrolling option.
Considering from the search engines point of view, it is also true that it took a longer duration to index all the pages of your website with the help of pagination scheme, though it is also true that with the help of pagination scheme search engine crawls can index all your pages too, but with infinite scrolling sometimes they might also get confused.
Conclusion of Pagination Vs. Infinite Scrolling!
If you just consider the fact that Search Engines can crawl your site better with Pagination then let me clear you that it is not always true. Search Engines are becoming smarter day by day. No matter what technique you are using to list your content, search engines will surely crawl them easily.
Then, what is my personal opinion about using Pagination or Infinite Scrolling?
Pagination Vs. Infinite Scrolling – Which one is better?
Well, in my opinion, Pagination scheme is far better than using infinite scrolling option. Although I would suggest using tags like rel=”prev” and rel=”next” so that search engines can understand the consecutive structure of your website.
What is your own opinion about it? Please do share your opinion about this blog, or your own personal opinion in the form of the comment below.
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