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You’ve seen it a zillion times. You land on a website and instead of an article with photos all on one page for you to scroll down and read you’re forced to click through a bunch of slides and text one by one to finish the article. Maybe I’m not describing this well so here’s an example (which by the way is an interesting break down of who died on the season finale of Walking Dead, so don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet, and don’t get me started on that frustrating finale):
popsugar.com/entertainment/Negan-Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe-Game-Walking-Dead-40807377#photo-40807377
Does anyone know if there is a term for this type of web article and if so what is it? I must say that I absolutely HATE these, but then again, whenever I do a Google search for almost anything, these are the type of sites that always seem to show up at the top of search results. I’m assuming that this technique forces people to spend more time on a site, and Google gives love to sites like that so this could explain the search results.
I’m sure there is a name for this technique so hopefully someone here knows what it is.
I think they’re just called multi-page articles with a slideshow feature.
Before you go off creating a website like this just to get Google rankings, multi-page articles seem to be one of the most hated things on the web currently. (Google multi-page article.) And Google has a strong history of tackling tricksters in their search algorithms. You may put a lot of work into this and wake up one morning to find all your Google traffic has disappeared.
However, having said that, Google is an advertiser and the multi-page article generates lots more page views and clicks for ads, so it’s hard to see where Google will eventually fall on this issue.
I hate them too and seem to encounter them whenever you search for things like “top 10” this or that. It’s entirely created for getting click-throughs and I suppose it helps with Google plus getting you to see adverts. Really annoying. Even big branded sites do it now like conde nast traveller.
I believe what you are referring to is “album” and functions as you are describing.
“However, having said that, Google is an advertiser and the multi-page article generates lots more page views and clicks for ads, so it’s hard to see where Google will eventually fall on this issue.”
Bingo! It’s all about ad impressions. Why have 1 ad impression for a “top 10” article when you can have 10 or 11?
This article method is one of the most annoying I’ve ever seen and I can see why Google doesn’t approve of it. In my opinion, it’s grey hat SEO. Not quite black for sure, but definitely a slimy way to get more hits. And yes, we see this a lot these days. Far too much, in my view.
From my personal perspective, I don’t think it would be a good idea to use this method on an adult related blog or site. Especially with several links leading to porn sponsors. That’s just my opinion though.
“I can see why Google doesn’t approve of it”
But I swear these sites always seem to be in the top ten results of any Google search. Hard to imagine Google will penalize these sites at some point.
By the way, I am not aware of any major adult blog that uses this technique. Anyone here know of one? Or are you doing it on your blog (we promise not to beat you up).
This practice isn’t SEO. It has nothing to do with where the page ends up appearing in the search engines.
If Google were to frown on it, it is because of the user experience.
I wonder how much of their Google position is about page depth, time on site and pure numbers of visitors – much like porn tubes with almost no content at all other than the video. It probably doesn’t even matter how many actually search for these, they’re naturally given that position because of the behaviour of the visitor once they get there, from any source.
These are basically nothing more than click-bait in most cases, just gathered images for a slide show, most of their traffic seems to come from social shares and those shitty ads that appear on far too many sites.
Hell, even I’ve been tempted once or twice to click on them to check out the “Creepiest places in the world” or the “Most shocking moments caught on camera”, even though I know where it’s going.
Even though it seems to work, I would not be doing this on an established site any time soon. And creating another one for it, just to try it out, probably won’t have the same impact because we don’t get the same amount of social traffic.
“This practice isn’t SEO. It has nothing to do with where the page ends up appearing in the search engines.”
Correct. In fact there’s a whole body of literature on how to deal with paginated articles (which is what this is). It’s an SEO problem, not an SEO tactic. In short the articles tell you to create a “view all” version of the page and have Google index that (using canonical meta tags). However, if Google then sends traffic to the view all version of the page and you put them into a paginated version, then you’re cloaking and can get penalized by Google.
