With the advancements in web design, parallax has become one of the trending features of web designing, yet Parallax Scrolling Websites are not SEO-optimized. Before going into further depth, let us first know what Parallax Scrolling is all about.
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Parallax Scrolling was first adopted in video games to give a 3-D effect or you can say an illusion of another dimension i.e. depth.
But as per the web design industry Parallax Scrolling can be defined as:
“One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth.”
First Parallax Scrolling website was created in early 2000’s for Nike by Ian Coyle.
Since we now have a basic idea about what is Parallax, let’s now understand why Parallax is not SEO-Friendly
Parallax Scrolling Websites loading time is very poor.
It is very tough to track the user engagement in Parallax Sites even using with Google Analytics. Since Parallax websites are single page it is impossible to track the intensity of traffic
Parallax websites are not always browser friendly all the functionalities of the Parallax websites might be working in one browser which mayn’t be working in other. As a result of which the developers needs to extensively test and rewrite the code to make sure all browsers support the Parallax websites.
Optimization difficulties: Since most of the Parallax Websites are single page applications hence they might not be as content rich as other applications thus making difficult to optimize for multiple keywords.
Parallax Websites also failed to work properly on mobile devices. Since more and more people using mobile devices and Parallax Websites less efficient with Mobile devices could affect the business of the organization.
As told earlier, Parallax websites are all single page websites hence you have limited number of words for optimization and you will have to strive for those keywords.
URL Take it is as a thumb rule to use keyword in the URL of the page. Including all the keywords in the URL looks untidy and weird. So, it is better to have partial match in order not to look over-optimized. Moreover, if your application has limited number of pages the keywords could also be used in secondary pages.
H1 Having one H1 in the page is a good SEO Practice. Here also using the keywords efficiently is a good practice. Including all the keywords in one heading looks unnatural and the user might not be able to interpret it properly.
Meta Issues Though this issue holds less importance on the lines of SEO optimization but on business perspective this could play a major role. Having one set of meta-data i.e. only one entry point through which user can make entry to your website is another way of restricting the visibility of Website. Hence, increasing the meat – data will increase the number of pages and thus users will have now multiple entry points thus increasing the visibility and business for the website.
As the saying goes “All the money shouldn’t be kept at one place.”
Using AJAX and other navigation elements in order to dynamically change the URL or by jumping down the content with unique URL is beneficial.
Another thing that can be done is writing blogs, newsletters and frequent posts which will allow users to visit by keeping the Parallax effect intact.
In order to keep the Parallax Scrolling and SEO go hand in hand, you need to have Parallax design on the home page and have unique URL’s for subpages in order to optimize the search traffic.
