Mobile site scrolls past content straight to the products. Can this affect our seo?

[JH_OffLimits]

As our content can be quite long at the top, we introduced js anchor scroll going straight to the products, by passing the banner and the content at the top. Can this have an issue on seo?

[JH_OffLimits]

Any help would be great!

[bridget.randolph]

Hi JH,

Typically, collapsing lengthier content on a mobile site (with an option to expand/view the content if desired) in order to improve UX is not considered an issue for Google. However, anytime you're using JS, there's a risk that search engine crawlers won't be able to see what you're doing. You may want to test with JS disabled in your browser to get an idea of what they might be seeing otherwise.

What is the reason for the length of the content at the top of the page? Are you creating that content for users or for search engines? I'm guessing it's not really for users if you're auto-scrolling them past it? This is often something that Google can spot and discount the value of.

I would probably recommend (if possible) a "collapse and expand" approach to lengthy content at the top of the page, rather than autoscrolling down to the products. Show the beginning of that content and offer a "click to expand" if users want to read the full text. You could use JS for that expand and default a non-JS experience to simply display the full content, to ensure that search engines do see the full text. Or if the content includes images, consider removing the images or shrinking them for the mobile version of the site. You may also want to test shortening the length of the content on some of your pages and see whether this impacts performance in one direction or the other.

Hope that helps!