#i think the only other global tags i have used on purpose recently were for the mechs and for wooden overcoats
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Timbits Disappearing Act
Whelp, recently I mentioned an old fanfiction I read awhile ago that had an idea I liked, but a plot that I didn’t really, so here’s my take on it I guess?
Inspired by this post, although it ended up more like Canada is still just invisible. Its in the tags on that post that I mentioned the other fic
Also sorry about the ending, I couldn’t think of anything more satisfying than whatever people imagine Alfred had to do to earn the timbit’s forgiveness.
Very few nations knew this about him, but Canada loved donuts. Almost as much as he loved maple syrup. If he had to choose, he’d probably rank donuts in third place. First place would be maple syrup, obviously. Second place would be maple donuts.
He never tried to hide this fact, but almost nobody knew because most of the nations couldn’t really see him.
He had theorized before about why that is. He used to think maybe it was because he wasn’t likable enough, but he’s pretty much as likable as a nation can be, and nothing changed. Then he thought maybe he wasn’t exciting enough, but even inventing a sport where people tied knives to their feet and tackled each other on purpose hadn’t changed anything. That’s when he started thinking: maybe it wasn’t him exactly, maybe it was circumstance.
There were so many nations. Very few of them ever actually got to talk during a world meeting. Dialogue was not split evenly. It was a competitive environment, and while Canada wasn’t bothered by competition per se, having a say during the global meetings wasn’t usually something he was motivated to do.
He was cozy where he was. He used to be a bit resentful of his brother, how people just seemed to pay attention to him naturally. Alfred just always seemed to have the spotlight. Over time though...
“America!”
he learned to appreciate the benefits of near invisibility.
Alfred’s attention moves back to the front of the room, where Austria had been giving his presentation. Matthew takes the opportunity to lean over and grab another timbit from the box his brother stole from him.
Austria was glaring up at Alfred from his spot by the podium, “How many times do we have to tell you not to bring food to meetings?”
“Well, it worked after four, but this is the nineteenth time your askin me that, so my bet is on a number higher than nineteen,” Alfred says with a winning smile.
Multiple sighs and groans echoed around the room.
“Huh,” Matthew mutters around a mouthful of donut, “even Austria is getting on your ass about it now. You really should stop eating at meetings, Alfred.”
Alfred’s smile doesn’t slip an inch as he spins in his chair to flip Matthew the bird, and Matthew laughs in response.
Across the room, England frowned, “what kind of maths is that supposed to be? If it's the nineteenth time, then it didn’t work after the fourth.”
Alfred continues his chair spin till he’s gone 360 degrees around to point back at Arthur, “Yeah, except for it did! I haven’t brought any food to a meeting since the fourth time y’all told me not to!”
“America, you have two boxes of…,” Germany frowned, “What do you call those again?”
“Munchkins,” Alfred answers automatically, glancing innocently over at Matthew, “they’re from Dunkin.”
Matthew sucks in a breath and almost chokes. Alfred scoots over to pat him hard on the back, but keeps his eyes on Germany. Matthew tries to glare at his brother anyway. Hopefully he got his point across without words. If my windpipe wasn’t full of delicious TIMBITS right now, you’d be in so much pain.
“Right,” Germany says, clearly confused to see Alfred waving his hand in the air strangely, “whatever they are, you have two boxes of them. Sitting right in front of you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t bring those,” Alfred replies simply.
Matthew, recovered from what would have been one of his most embarrassing deaths yet (even if it was only Alfred who noticed), decides to enact his revenge. First though, he’ll grab another handful of timbits.
“Then who did?” Arthur asks.
Alfred points directly at Matthew, his finger almost poking his brother’s nose. His brother, who is frozen with one hand deep in the box of timbits, right in front of everyone at the meeting.
“Canada,” Alfred says.
There was a moment of silence, and the whole room seemed to pause. Everyone was looking in Matthew’s direction. He could feel himself starting to blush with embarrassment. Alfred looks pleasantly surprised; he hadn’t been expecting that to work either, but it would be nice to not be the only one in trouble for once. Figures the first time Alfred rats me out suddenly everyone can see-
“Who?” he hears.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me!” Alfred cries, throwing up his hands.
Matthew releases a breath, half relief and half disappointment. He grabs both boxes of timbits and slides them back towards his seat.
“Canada!” Alfred says again, still pointing, “Right there! The nation of Canada? My brother?”
Everyone just looked confused.
“The one covered in donut crumbs!” Alfred continues. This makes Matthew glance down at his suit. There were a couple pieces of glaze sticking to his tie, but it wasn’t that bad.
“He brings donuts to every meeting! Every time I get yelled at for having donuts, Canada is the one who brought them. He’s practically addicted!”
Austria is rubbing his temples, “None of this is even important,” he snaps, “I do not care where the doughnuts originally came from. The problem is I can’t even hear myself think over the sound of you chewing.”
Alfred sighs, exasperated, and reaches towards Matthew and the two boxes of timbits, “It's not my fault you have super hearing, Beethoven.” Matthew scoots away, clutching the boxes close to his chest.
Austria’s face flushes, “Beethoven was deaf,” he scoffs, “and German.”
Alfred is looking solely at Matthew though, “bro, you cannot be serious.”
Matthew shakes his head solemnly, “you disrespected my timbits, bro. Disrespect the timbits, and you lose timbits privileges.”
“Wha-, so you’re really not gonna share anymore?” Alfred asks, incredulously.
“You know why it has to be this way,” Matthew says in the most serious voice he has.
“Aw c’mon, Matt, they’re not that different.”
Matthew narrows his eyes with actual irritation. “Go on, dig the hole deeper, I’ll wait.”
Alfred does the smart thing and pauses to consider the options. Insist on being right (because he is) but also end up arguing with Matthew and no donuts, or talk him into sharing...
Alfred puts on what he calls his ‘straight-talkin face’. “Alright, what do ya want for ‘em?”
#they do the 'who?' thing#which is cheap I know#mostly I was trying to avoid the fat shaming Alfred trope#cause that was what I disliked about the original#by the end of it canada was visible and then they started calling both of the bros 'fleshy'#for eating too many donuts#yeesh#hws america#hws canada#hetalia#my writing
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..........
oooooooooor i could just go to the ‘eris wolf 359′ tag, find one eris/lovelace post, click the ship tag, find two posts from a year ago, and then chicken out from bothering ppl in the global w359 tag who do not want to hear from me
#yes that's RIGHT i'm a COWARD#did i put shitposts in the global tma tag? yes#does that mean i am good at using other global tags? NO#i think the only other global tags i have used on purpose recently were for the mechs and for wooden overcoats#for some reason putting things in those three tags is........... less intimidating?#yes i know it doesn't make sense yes i KNOW the w359 fandom is full of lovely people!#they probably would not be upset with me at all!#AND YET#do i understand my issues no but i do recognize how best to avoid anxiety: don't do the thing that makes u anxious#maybe another day i will do the thing#not today today i did already other difficult things
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Interview with sugamins about her work House of Cards (Ao3′s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work)
Before You Read the Interview
Archive of Our Own Transcript
Reddit Transcript Part 1 / Part 2
House of Cards is documented within the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Works on Archive of Our Own Project, otherwise known as T50BTS, by Charmedseoul. It is the second most hit English work on the Archive of Our Own platform, most hit BTS work, and 16th most hit work overall. It centers around the internationally popular K-Pop idol group BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) with the main characters being Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook. This work is being documented for historical purposes for the Fanlore website with its own page. Charmedseoul is a BTS-focused anonymous historian who plans to eventually document each of the top 50 most hit BTS work on Ao3 as in depth as this one. If you are in contact with any of the authors of these works, please contact her on Twitter @charmedseoul or on Tumblr @charmedseoull.
Parts of this interview have been edited with links to Fanlore and Wikipedia pages for understanding. Any information in [brackets] serves for further clarity for readers and elaboration of information.
Disclaimers: This interview contains spoilers for the BTS Archive of Our Own work House of Cards. The story’s Archive of Our Own tags contain violence and gangster activity, along with discussion of prostitution and drug use. The full tag list is:
Alternate Universe - Gangsters
Gang Violence
Violence
Drugs
Drug Use
Explicit Sexual Content
Explicit Language
Blood and Gore
Blood and Torture
Gambling
Gunplay
Undercover
Disturbing Themes
Homophobic Language
Attempted Rape/Non-Con
Xenophobia
Dom/sub
Threesome - M/M/M
Drug Addiction
Dubious Consent
This interview discusses an 18+ mature work and Not Safe for Work topics. Please read this interview at your own discretion. You are responsible for the content you consume.
House of Cards by sugamins is a multi-chapter Archive of Our Own fanfiction that follows police officer Kim Taehyung’s undercover operation into the gangster world of Haedogje Pa. Jeon Jungkook, shrouded in an air of mystery and dubbed “The Boy,” is the heir to this crime empire. Park Jimin lives with him, acting as a lover of sorts in a high, pristine penthouse apartment. The story follows the three and their complicated relationship where sex, violence, and drugs surround them. Kim Taehyung tries to take down the empire as his moral lines of black and white begin blurring into gray. In this crime-ridden alternate reality to Seoul, everything from the structure of the gangster world to the trust between three lovers is as fragile as a house of cards.
Now presenting the interview with sugamins, author of Archive of Our Own’s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work, House of Cards:
How did you start writing?
How did you get into fanfiction?
How much writing experience did you have prior to House of Cards?
Do you have any literary or artistic inspirations? Any other authors or works that have inspired you to create anytime before or after House of Cards?
How did you become an ARMY [ARMY stands for Adorable Representative MC for the Youth. It is the fandom name for fans of BTS, otherwise known as Bangtan Sonyeondan]?
I started writing fanfiction in 2012. But before then, I used to enjoy writing stories as a child and young teenager. I used to write and illustrate my own stories. I even had a sketchbook filled with my own comic book, which was terrible! But I've always been creative. It started with art and then I moved onto writing when I discovered I was able to be much more creative with my words rather than my pencil.
I first got into fanfiction through my years spent on Tumblr. I had always known that it had existed, but I had never really gone looking for it because I hadn't belonged to a fandom at that point in my life. It was back in 2012 when I stumbled upon an EXO fanfic that a lot of people were talking about (Arbitrage, you can find it on Livejournal.) I read it and then thought...wow, so this is fanfiction! From that point, I started reading more and more, mostly Infinite fanfiction. And then I decided to start writing with the encouragement of an old online friend, and here I am!
In terms of writing experience, I have never formally received education. I stopped studying English Language and Literature when I was 16, instead focusing on Art, History, and Religious Education (purely because I wanted to learn about philosophy and quantum mechanics) for my final two years at high-school. The only experience I have is through writing fanfiction. I started back in 2012, and I've developed a lot since then. I started off small, writing horror short stories and little collections. Brotherhood was the first 'long fic' I created. I was shocked that it managed to get so big because I had never created a story of that size before. Writing helped me gain experience and figure out what worked and what didn't work, what I was good at writing, and where I was lacking and needed to learn. I don't think you can really experience an art form until you start doing it. You can learn all about the techniques and the conventions, but until you pick up a pen and start writing or drawing, you won't ever know what it means to create.
My literary inspiration has always been Stephen King. Which is funny, as he has described himself as 'having diarrhea of the typewriter.' I think that applies to me sometimes. I am a bit of a wordy writer, though I've started honing it down for certain stories. Sometimes, a story needs to be floral and descriptive, sometimes, it needs to be punchy and direct. So, King was my major inspiration, especially with horror. I also enjoy the works of Poe and Lovecraft (I acknowledge the problematic themes in the work of Lovercraft and seek not to praise him as a person. He was a terrible person for sure, but sadly, he had a way with cosmic horror that is hard to find.) I also enjoy Chuck Palahniuk and the dark, seedy and overall zany stories that he has created. I like his style a lot!
In terms of inspirations for House of Cards, I was obviously inspired by the films Infernal Affairs/The Departed. American Gangster and Training Day were also major inspirations (and also because I love Denzel Washington's performances in both films. I mean, who doesn't love him?) But I also drew inspiration from other sources that were less focused on gangs, more focused on the dark, nihilistic state of the world around us. I couldn't recommend the TV series True Detective hard enough. It is one of the best series I have ever watched. It handles dark and disturbing content so well, and its fractured, unreliable story-telling and philosophical musing is some of the best I've ever seen on screen. I highly recommend checking it out, but be sure to check the content warning and triggers because it certainly isn't suitable for younger audiences and those with triggers. In terms of real-life content, I think Ross Kemps' docu-series are very good. Particularly Extreme World and On Gangs. His docu-series show the dark and disturbing side of criminal activity, the drug trade and more.
I became a fan of BTS [Bangtan Sonyeondan] back in 2013. I had already been a fan of K-Pop for some time by then, as I had started listening to various K-Pop and K-Rock artists back in 2009. I knew of their debut, but I had seen hundreds of new acts debut by the time that they broke into the scene, and so I didn't pay much heed. Someone I followed on Tumblr at the time kept posting about how much she loved them, especially Taehyung [BTS V/Kim Taehyung]. One day, I stumbled upon a gifset of Yoongi [BTS Suga/Min Yoongi] being sarcastic in one of their first interviews. I thought he was funny, so I decided to check them out. At the time, they had recently released We Are Bulletproof Pt. 2 [BTS’s second music video release with their debut album 2 Kool 4 Skool]. I followed them from that point, and their first comeback [A “comeback” refers to when a K-Pop idol group releases new music, usually done twice a year.] was also my first comeback. I liked their music [BTS released Boy In Luv and Just One Day in 2014, both music videos of songs from their Skool Luv Affair EP.], but I liked them even more as individuals. I loved watching their shows [Here is a link to BTS’s schedule during 2014 when they had their first comeback. You can find the shows and interviews they were on there.], even though they are incredibly embarrassing to look back on now. They just had so much energy and looked to be having so much fun that I was having fun just watching them. I was a fan, I liked a lot of their songs and followed their activities. But it wasn't until they released HYYH Part One [Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa Part 1 (Korean) = The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1 (This is the title in English), released with the I Need U and Dope music videos.] that I really became a fan of their music. I had already created a couple of small horror stories for the fandom at that point. HYYH Part One [The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1] inspired me so much that I created Brotherhood, my first 'long fic.' I joined AO3 [Archive of Our Own] and started posting there. I received so much support from fellow fans that I carried on writing, and the rest is history!
How has your experience being an ARMY [Adorable Representative MCs of the Youth, BTS’s global fan base name.] been? Did you ever leave the fandom then come back? How did you interact with others when you first got into the fandom and as you grew up?
How have you been since you wrote House of Cards? What have you been working on?
Are you okay with talking about how old you are now and how old you were when you wrote House of Cards?
Before you even wrote House of Cards, what inspired it? Any TV shows? Music? Movies? Books? Ideas? It could be anything.
How did you start writing House of Cards? Did you finish the entire story then publish it or did you write it as you went? What was the writing process like?
Did you have any beta readers or editors? If you did, are you still in contact with them now? How did they feel about your work?
My experience being a fan has mostly been positive over the years. In the earlier days, back around when I first started writing for the fandom, it was certainly much more positive. I've received so much support over the years, not only in my writing but in my personal life from readers and fellow fans that being a fan of the boys [The members of BTS] really has changed my life. That's not an exaggeration. I doubt I would even be here now without those years having such a positive effect on my mental health. I've never really been the kind to interact with others and form cliques within the fandom, I just like being in my own space and interacting with everyone that comes my way, I guess?
These days, I'm not as active as a writer or in fandom spaces however. I feel like my time in the fandom has started to come up and I don't know how I feel about it just yet. I feel nostalgic for the time when I was first starting out in the fandom and I didn't really know much, but everything was fun. It doesn't feel so fun now, but I mostly contribute that to the effect that Twitter has had on shaping the fandom's growth. Twitter has never been a good place for creatives within fandoms because of issues with algorithms and such. Tumblr was always the better website for hosting artistic content for a variety of reasons. So, I think the fact that everything is on Twitter now has been partly responsible for my decline in engagement and overall enjoyment. I'm currently taking a break from Twitter. The next couple of months will be what makes me either stay or leave the fandom.
Since writing House of Cards, I've been an active writer in the fandom. Over the years, I've added quite a lot of stories to my AO3 accounts and various pseuds. My largest ongoing story is another gang story, set in the 1980s, called Valentino Summers. I actually started writing and publishing it on Ao3 just four or so months after I finished House of Cards—which is wild to think about. Finally finishing House of Cards seems like such a long time ago in my mind, and yet I'm still working on a story I created that same year! I like contributing horror stories to the fandom, especially in the Halloween period. I like publishing series in the month/upcoming weeks before Halloween—though I won't be doing so this year [2020].
When I started writing House of Cards, I would have just turned 22. It was inspired by the song 'Wires' by The Neighbourhood. I might be mistaken, but I believe that Jungkook [BTS Jungkook/Jeon Jungkook] posted a tweet with the song in it. [Jungkook did tweet about this song. Here is the English translation.] I had never heard of the band before, but my partner was a fan of their music. She sent the song to me and I was very interested in the lyrics, so I started discussing them with her. One thing led to the next, and then we had basically come up with the entire plot of the story. We just needed to create the characters. We spent a little while doing so, and then I started doing some research and started writing the story. There really isn't a grand backstory to House of Cards, it just happened so fast. We often come up with story ideas like that, and my partner is responsible for a huge amount of my stories. She has the creative visions, which I then turn into words. We make quite the team, haha~ The inspirations, I mentioned those in my previous answer regarding films and TV shows.
I published the story as I went, though I staggered the updates because I didn't want to post too frequently. I had the entire story planned out from the start——I didn't change a single aspect of the story no matter what I received in terms of feedback. I think a lot of readers assume that writers might tweak things if they sense the audience wants something to happen in terms of plot or relationships. Personally, I don't like doing that. I like sticking to my plans even if I know my vision might not be what the readers want. I think it's important for the story to be created the way I see it because my vision is what made me create it, if that makes sense.
The writing process was surprisingly smooth! You might not think it because the story is big and there are a lot of characters and plot threads to keep on top of, but it went smoothly for me. It flowed just as smoothly from start to finish as Brotherhood did. I never struggled once with writing the chapters, nor did I ever get stuck and wonder if I should change the content in order to make it easier to write. I'm surprised that I managed to complete it so easily because that's not the case with writing now! I tend to be a lot slower now, more deliberate and more open to changes in order to ease the process and the overall flow of the story. In a way, this change has been for the best. I do wonder what House of Cards would be like if I were to write it now, with my different approach to planning and writing. It would probably have a quicker flow, and the word count would either go down as a result of cuts, or go up because of additional scenes I would have likely included.
I didn't have any betas, which you can probably tell from the work. My stories are so big that I never wanted to put the burden of fixing them onto someone else. I know they are imperfect, oftentimes bloated things, but that's just what they are. I did try creating a story with another writer in the past, but it didn't go very well. She would often have conflicting opinions on things and would not have any leeway for anything I suggested, whereas I always had leeway to allow her to change things. Even to the point of completely changing the plot of the story that I had already started writing, and then allowing her to add graphic sexual content she didn't even want to be in the story. She actually stopped writing fanfiction randomly in the middle of us creating the story! She made a post about it being disgusting and nasty and then bowed out. I have no clue if she ever came back! So, my negative experience with attempting to work with someone else when creating a story kind of made me not want to have a beta. It's a wild story, I know!
House of Cards is praised for its realism and accuracy with weaponry, torture, sex, and violence. How did you research these things?
How did you come up with the gangster universe in House of Cards? How did you develop Haedogje Pa?
How did you name the original characters in House of Cards? Did any characters in particular take inspiration from existing characters in TV shows, anime, books, any type of media?
How did you decide on Vminkook as your main characters for the story? What do you see in their dynamic and them as characters?
Jimin is claimed to be one of the best written characters in the entire story. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?
Taehyung is an especially dynamic character whose morals get tested time and time again in House of Cards. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?
Jungkook is one of the characters that the readers spend the least amount of time getting a perspective from, but is incredibly well written in his character progression. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?
When it came to various aspects in the story, I did do research. Most of it never really had an impact on the story itself. For example, I would be looking up gun models that are used by law enforcement agencies around the world and trying to find specs of them so I could learn how many bullets each gun held, or how much a magazine could hold. In action scenes, I didn't want my characters firing off 20+ bullets for a gun that—in reality—holds far less. That's a fact that doesn't really mean much to the average reader, but it meant something to me! I've always hated how many bullets fly through the air in action scenes in films and TV shows because I'm always wondering if it's possible with the firearms featured in the scene haha~ In terms of torture, I've come across the subject through various documentaries and TV shows about gangs, crime and serial killers. I didn't really do much additional research into the topic, beyond reading up on what I had come across to make sure it wasn't fictionalised for drama purposes. Obviously, there will be some lack of realism in my story because I couldn't possibly write a realistic portrayal of gang violence and torture when I have zero personal experience with it. My aim wasn't to give the story 'full' realism (I'll explain more about that in the next question) but to simply create a world that felt real, even if there were little aspects that had to be exaggerated for the sake of the story. Taehyung's behaviour when undercover certainly broke many procedures. The only thing working in his favour that allowed him to get away with it is that the crimes he committed couldn't be directly traced to him. But a real undercover agent would never do the things that he did on behalf of the gang. Basically, this means that the entire story is unrealistic! But of course, it wouldn't be very entertaining if Taehyung simply observed from the background and didn't dirty his hands. So, I had to bend and break the rules a little!
For the universe, I knew that I couldn't base it too much in reality. Because of basic Korean law, it would have been impossible for me to write the gang operating in the way they did in the story—especially with guns. Most Korean gangs tend to use other forms of violence and weapons in order to control their respective areas, rather than guns. My other story, Taste of Ink, has what I would consider a more realistic approach to gang activity—with the main weapons being knives, baseball bats, etc. and the main forms of violence being assault instead of flat-out murder. So, for the sake of allowing guns to appear in the story, I had to create a Neo-Seoul, so to speak. I took inspiration from Korean gangs, and mixed it with influences from other gang cultures in order to create 'Haedogje Pa.'
When it comes to naming original characters, I honestly don't put much thought into it. I like to use real names for inspiration. I often Google various Korean films I've watched and read the cast list in order to find interesting character and actor names. This is because I have a habit of reusing names sometimes. For example, readers of my stories might have come across a couple of Daesu and Goohee characters. Do you know where I got these names from? I picked Daesu from Oh Daesu - Choi Minsik's character in Oldboy. Goohee comes from the manhwa 'Let Dai' - he is the stubborn gang leader that actually has a good heart beneath his rough exterior. I ended up liking him the most by the end of the story, so his name is one that often comes to mind when I need to pick an original character name.
I never really consider real life dynamics when I'm writing because my stories are so detached from reality that it seems pointless including any inspiration from reality. I chose the three main characters simply because, at the time, they seemed to fit the character moulds the best. The other characters fit their respective characters so well (especially Namjoon [BTS RM/Kim Namjoon] and Yoongi) that I simply thought it was best to have Taehyung, Jimin [BTS Jimin/Park Jimin] and Jungkook as the three lead roles. I chose them more based on how I thought they could personally fit the characters, rather than focus on the dynamic. To use Taehyung as an example, I thought that he would fit the character of the informant in my story because in reality, he is intelligent and seemed like he would suit the role. For Jimin, I thought he would be a good choice for a character that some might think is vulnerable or even weak. He is actually very strong and the most important character for the plot progression. For Jungkook, I liked the thought of someone with such an innocent outer appearance hiding a dark secret.
I'm so glad that readers took to Jimin so positively on a whole. I know there are some that hated him, or that hated the fact I chose him for such a role (a 'negative' sex worker role). But Jimin is the most important character for the plot progression. It is through him that the entire plan finally culminates in the explosive finish. I wanted to treat him with care because I understood that his character could go very wrong if not handled correctly. It would have been easy for him to simply become nothing more than a sexual prop, should the story have focused too much on Taehyung and Jungkook as the key players. So, I decided to subvert it by giving Jimin the ultimate hand in the story and allowing him to have more control than Jungkook in the end. If Jimin had not decided to follow through with the plan, if he had decided to snitch or had simply refused to do his part in exposing the gang, the story would've ended drastically differently. But I also didn't want to write Jimin taking control of the entire situation at the end because it would've felt ingenuine. He is a character that has been deeply affected by a lifetime of trauma. I was worried that some might take my portrayal of his trauma the wrong way, and see him not as a character that has suffered immense mental damage but rather as an annoying, weak character that gets in the way of more 'interesting' dynamics. I'm sure there will be readers that think that. Mentally traumatized individuals are often seen in such negative light, be they fictional characters or real people. When writing his character, especially in the later scenes, I wanted to make sure the trauma he experienced would shape his behaviour. Writing the scene of him getting ready to leave, when he is taking his pills and he doesn't think he can do it, it was hard. It was hard getting into that headspace of feeling so powerless in the moment and knowing that freedom is in reach, but not knowing how to achieve it. He was a difficult character to write, but I think he turned out just right in the end.
Taehyung was probably the best character to write. I love characters that start off so morally upright and pristine, and by the end of the story, their backs are bending and close to breaking from the weight of their conscience and misdeeds. His character has many facets to him that made his perspectives so interesting to tackle. From his green days in the gang, where he is horrified by the violence he sees, to the changes in his psyche as he starts to become desensitized to it all. Fundamentally, Taehyung begins the story as a good man, a hero, but by the end, there is no black and white thinking. He has become grey, muddied from his time spent in the gang. Is he a hero for bringing them down? Would a hero do the things that he did in order to bring down the gang? He killed people. He tortured people. He threatened a man with a gun, a man he knew had a deepset fear of guns that would severely trigger him. I think it all depends on how the reader sees it. The hardest thing to write for his character was his troubled descent into the relationship between him, Jungkook and Jimin, and how it affects his thought processes and emotions. I didn't want House of Cards to be seen as a romantic story when I created it. If readers see it that way, they are more than entitled to their own interpretations. I cannot tell them how they can interpret my art, that is not my role as the creator. I don't know if I effectively portrayed the co-dependency between the three main characters as well as I would've liked. But I had never tackled such a story and themes before, and so it was all new to me.
I didn't know that Jungkook had the least perspective from the three main characters. Similarly, I never really put that much effort into creating and developing his character! Jungkook simply 'happened' in the moment. He would appear in the chapter, and then his character would basically take control of the scene. I never really knew what he was going to say or do beyond my rough plans for each scene. I just waited until he appeared and let the creative spirit flow through me. That's how he came to be! I've had that happen many times in the past with characters—they have a life of their own and I've no control over them. In my story, Brotherhood, Taehyung happened the same way. It was impossible to write his character in that story because he was so wild and free-spirited that it didn't feel right unless his behaviour was a total spur-of-the-moment reaction to the other characters and new plot points. But with Jungkook in House of Cards, I don't know why I didn't have him planned out like the others. It's interesting to think that he might've had a good progression when I never planned any of it in detail!
Were there any original characters you particularly liked writing or enjoyed?
When you wrote for the BTS hyung line, how did you determine their roles in the story and characterize each of them?
Is there a reason behind Namjoon saying “brother” or was it a consciously written character quirk?
When you handled more serious subject matter in House of Cards, how did you feel when writing it? Were you ever startled by your own work?
Was there any type of purposeful titling for the fanfiction chapters?
What was your reason for House of Cards’ open ending?
I liked writing Lim, the original informant that helped Taehyung join the gang. I like writing characters that come across as sleazy. In his case, the sleaze was all an act and wasn't true to his character; he was affecting it for the sake of creating a persona. But I enjoy writing absolute sleaze balls too—the kind of guys that have chest hair and wear gold chains and thick watches, who practically ooze oil. I just find them fun! Lim was a good teacher, even when he was rough around the edges. It was sad doing what I had to do to him for the sake of the plot. But I feel like Lim understood the game as well as everyone else, and so he knew he was running on borrowed time.
Of course, I loved writing Bae Goohee too! He was an absolute bastard! I loved writing this figure that is spoken about throughout the story as a frightening man, one so brutal that the readers are already wary of him before he even appears in the story. I believe that Taehyung refers to him as a 'guard dog' at some point. I think Bae is the scariest character in the story for me because he is so ruthless and willing to do any order that the Jeon clan give to him. That kind of blind and unwavering devotion is frightening!
I also enjoyed writing Sungah and Jangmi. I think they're the only female characters in the story that have dialogue? Sungah has a great backstory that I unfortunately couldn't go into too much in the story, but it shaped her character a lot. I like how frank and intelligent she is—she holds her own even in a department filled with men that receive far more praise than she does simply because she is a woman. She also allowed me to add an angle about the unfair treatment of women in jobs that have power, drawing parallels with how Taehyung faces discrimination from his fellow officers when his sexuality is abruptly revealed during the investigation. As for Jangmi, I just liked writing about the wife of a mob boss! And not one that is simply a trophy wife, but actually has a lot of power and influence across the city. I wish I had been able to feature her more, alongside her husband, Jeon himself. But I like the scenes they appear in and I enjoyed writing them.
For the rest of the members, I had Namjoon and Hoseok [BTS J-Hope/Jung Hoseok]'s characters planned right from the start. I had also created plans for Yoongi and Seokjin [BTS Jin/Kim Seokjin], but I wasn't sure how much of a role they would play in the overall story. As I started writing them, I realised that Yoongi would play an important role in both Taehyung and Jimin's character development, and so he ended up featuring a lot more than I had expected. I planned their jobs and then let them influence how I would write them. Namjoon and Hoseok's characters came naturally. Yoongi's character completely took over his job role and basic description and became a really strong character that I'm proud of. Seokjin was a little trickier because he doesn't appear in too many scenes—but the scenes he does are integral to the plot. I needed to make sure that his character said everything he needed to in his limited scenes. He has quite the bombshell to drop after all! Seokjin was also tricky because I wanted him to have an air of mystery around him. I wanted him to be the kind of guy that not even Taehyung and his police connections would be able to unearth much about; a ghost in the system. I would've also liked for him to feature more in the story, but I feel like his character appeared in the essential scenes that the story needed. He was going to feature more in the planned sequel, being one of the first characters to appear alongside Yoongi. He was going to serve an important role, so I'm disappointed that I didn't get to show those scenes to readers.
With Namjoon, I wanted to portray him as a mature character, but not one that was conservative and stiff. I thought about having him say things like 'man' but that seemed too casual and didn't suit his character. 'Man' made him seem more like a surfer than a police officer. But when he said 'brother' in one of the scenes, I realised the word suited him better. It was fraternal, and it allowed him to show some affection towards the other characters without having to have physical contact with them. It's not the only Namjoon I've written that says 'brother' a lot. In Valentino Summers, Namjoon has experience with hippies in the neighbourhood that he lives in, so he also refers to other characters like Jimin as 'brother.' It just seems to suit him! I guess it's because I like creating Namjoon characters that are intelligent and mature, but still have a gentle and warm presence. I could picture him saying it in real life (I'm certain he already has!)
When writing serious subject matter, I'm surprised to admit that I was never shocked by what I was writing! I guess it's because I already knew that I was going to be handling dark themes. I wouldn't have tackled such subjects had I not felt comfortable doing so. Dark content isn't for everyone, and by that I don't simply mean consuming it. Creating it can be very difficult for some writers, and can even cause distress. It's not easy diving into a world that is filled with crime, pain and fear. It's even harder putting yourself into the shoes of a character that is suffering/has suffered. I was never writing in a desensitised state though. Far from it. I'm actually very sensitive to violence in reality. In fiction, it depends on the violence—but I'm usually not too affected by it. I've been a fan of horror since I was a child, and so I've seen a lot of nasty films filled with gore and 'shocking' deaths that never really had much of an effect on me. Unrealistic violence doesn't scare me. But when it comes to personal violence, that is always frightening to me. It's far scarier writing a scene where a character feels threatened by another character and doesn't know what is going to happen to them then, say, writing a scene of a character dying a bloody, ridiculous death in a horror story. Personal violence is much more realistic, therefore it is more unsettling to write. In House of Cards, the violence is very personal. It's in your face, it's inescapable for the characters that are involved in it. But at no point did I ever feel like I needed to stop writing because I was uncomfortable or scared by the content. If I had been uncomfortable, it would have been very reckless of me to continue writing the story.
My word of advice to fellow dark content writers: it's always important to recognise your own boundaries. There's nothing wrong with removing dark content from a story if you get a bad vibe or feel strange when writing/reviewing it. Always follow your gut instincts and never put out work that you don't like.
When writing stories, I vary between titling the chapters and leaving them blank. For House of Cards, I cannot remember the exact method for naming the chapters. Sometimes, the title comes to me when I am writing the plans and I have an idea that just suits the mood of the chapter. Other times, I have finished the entire chapter and I have to spend some time reviewing the content to decide that the title will be. In some cases, I have finished most of a whole story and I'm still not certain what to title it! I feel like with House of Cards, the titles came after the chapters were finished, or at least when they were works-in-progress.
There are some titles that really stand out to me. 'Nice Teeth' for example, is a really ridiculous title. Going into the chapter, I don't think many readers would've imagined what it could mean. 'Submachine Sodomy' is even funnier. I really can't believe I chose that as a title! I'll bet a lot of readers saw it and thought, "Oh no! Not another gunplay scene!" Luckily for them, it wasn't a reference to Jungkook's predilection for firearms in bed.
In terms of chapter titles that I really like: 'Delusions of Grandeur,' 'I Own This Fucking City,' 'Sleeping Dogs Bite' and 'Carpe-fucking-Diem.' I just feel like these titles are very well suited to the contents of the chapters. They are the kind of titles that have bite to them, that hint at action or an important plot point.
As for the open ending, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I had planned to continue the story in a sequel that would pick up after the events of House of Cards, roughly a year on after the investigation. However, I did not pursue this sequel. I wanted House of Cards to end on an open note for the sequel to continue the story. When it comes to certain stories, I just feel that closed endings aren't always necessary. I often enjoy stories with open endings. With House of Cards, it didn't seem right just closing the book and saying it was over. There was still so much that needed to be explored. Unfortunately, I decided to not continue it. But I still think that House of Cards' ending fits the story.
Were there any scenes or moments or lines in House of Cards that you were particularly proud of or want to highlight?
If you were to write the Yoomin sequel to House of Cards, how would’ve that looked like?
How were readers’ reactions to your work in the beginning?
Did any reader comments stick with you in particular?
How did you take the criticisms and hatred towards House of Cards for its serious subject matter? When did those types of comments start appearing? Also, where did the hatred come from? Twitter? Tumblr? Ao3 comments? Did people harass you at all or hurt you? How did you heal from that?
House of Cards has a lot of scenes. I'm proud of most of them and I think I did the best I could when writing them. I do not really like the sex scenes, but that is because I wanted to write them in a dirty, sleazy way. If I could, I would change them. I like the action scenes, especially the Gold Monkey Casino and police raid scenes. Action scenes are hard to write! Fight scenes in particular are so tricky. I often sit there, choreographing the fights so I can describe them! I loved writing Yoongi's introduction to the story, when he walks into the scene wearing nothing but his underpants.
One scene that I really liked writing is the scene where Namjoon and Hoseok investigate the USB stick that Taehyung sends to them. I personally love Namjoon and Hoseok's characters. I always enjoyed writing them. In this scene, I liked getting to write them in a setting that was not the police department office. A scene where they got to relax and banter with each other, even though they were still working. They discover a horrifying crime ring in the city, but they are left with no choice but to keep it secret because they do not want to risk blowing Taehyung's cover. I do not know why I really like this scene, I just do.
In the sequel, which focused primarily on Jimin and Yoongi, the plans were to have them reunite through Seokjin—who has avoided jail time through a plea deal with the SMPA. They undergo a healing process together as they try to come to terms with what happened to them. Yoongi has a lot of unhealed trauma from his childhood, much like Jimin, which I only got to briefly touch upon in House of Cards. They grow closer from bonding over their traumatic experiences, and they become happier and healthier as a result. Taehyung and Seokjin were also going to be main characters, with Jungkook, Namjoon and Hoseok making supporting appearances over the duration of the story. It was going to be drastically different from House of Cards because it would be lacking in action and violence. It would have been much more intimate, with much more scenes of characters talking and discovering things about one another.
I cannot remember early reactions to the story, I just know they were positive. There was a lot of positive support from the start. As I updated and started to get more and more into the story, I received a lot of support on tumblr too. I started posting chapter previews there, as I used to get asks [On Tumblr, users are able to ask bloggers questions through an “Ask” function. This can be done anonymously or with their own blog username associated with the question.] requesting them. I got A LOT of asks on my original Tumblr from readers that wanted to discuss the characters and certain scenes. It was really interesting seeing just how much the readers were interested in the story, so much so that they wanted to learn even more about the characters and the universe I had created.
Through House of Cards, I have received comments and messages from readers that had addictions. They told me about how they recognised their own behaviors through Taehyung, and this helped them realise what was happening to them. Those comments stuck with me for obvious reasons. I have family members with addiction issues, and knowing that I could help some stranger I have never met before come to terms with their own addictive behaviours had a massive impact on me. Funnily enough, a negative comment stuck with me. It was not a bad comment, by no means meant to cause offence. It was a comment that was left on the story when I was posting the early chapters. I recall the reader asking when the story was going to pick up the pace because it was too slow. It stuck with me because, at this point in the story, Taehyung had already trained to become an undercover agent, had enrolled in the gang, had met and interacted with Jungkook, and had murdered a man. I was surprised that this amount of development had been seen as 'slow' by a reader, as I had thought the plot had been moving very fast.
I never really had any hate posted on the story when I was updating it. I got angry reactions when I had finished it. Because the story had not ended the way some readers had wanted, I think that was what caused the negative reactions. On my original Tumblr, I even got an ask about how an anon reader was going to write their own ending because my one was bad. I told them that I did not want them to take my story and change it like that. I have no idea if they ever posted the ending anywhere. The angry reactions were mostly from shippers, who were upset with the story not ending the way they had wanted. To them, I ask: what were you expecting from the story? I thought it was always obvious that Taehyung was going to do what he had set out to do from the start, so I do not think I misled readers at all. It was a story about an undercover agent taking down a gang—and that is what I wrote.
I know there was some animosity towards me on Twitter too. Twitter is a whirlpool of negativity, I am not surprised. Writing House of Cards made me appear problematic. My partner used to follow an author a long time back, who tweeted about me being problematic—despite having never interacted with me or admittedly read my stories. It was shocking to me that people were making assumptions of who I was as a person based on a story I created. I have never created stories with the aims of hurting or upsetting others. I am a very quiet and private person, and I hate the idea of hurting others. It was strange to me that people could assume me to be this cruel or even dangerous individual, intent on hurting others, because I created a fictional story. Do they think the same of script writers for television shows? Or film directors, who create films with dark subject matter? Do they think published authors are problematic people for writing dark and disturbing content? Do they think certain genres should not exist because they do not personally like them?
I do think it is strange that fan fiction writers are placed on these ridiculously high pedestals of moral absolutism. Fan fiction was created to be a space for creative outlet for marginalised individuals, particularly queer individuals. The heavy censorship of dark and unusual content is putting this entire ethos at danger. I understand not wanting to have certain topics included in stories because there is a risk that the content can be used for grooming or can be presented in a way that can negatively affect young consumers' perceptions (like pedophilia for example.) I certainly agree that there needs to be boundaries in place to stop the community from being flooded with such illegal content. But I think there is a difference between wanting to remove dangerous content, and wanting to get rid of content you do not like. Content can be problematic to you, but that does not make it dangerous, illegal, or bad. For some readers, the content they create is their way of dealing with trauma. Maybe this is not healthy for them. But that is their decision to make, not yours.
I orphaned the story because I did not want to handle the potential backlash. To put it simply, I do not handle negative criticism well. Not because I am stuck-up and think I am perfect, but because I am a very anxious person. Just reading angry comments makes me feel very uncomfortable, often nauseous. I know that House of Cards has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from readers, and for that I am thankful. But I had to distance myself for the sake of my own mental health. Since orphaning it, it exploded in popularity. I am thankful that I orphaned it because that amount of attention would frighten me a lot, haha~
What was your reaction to the fanfiction trailer by Sappiamur?
How did you come to the decision to reveal your real name in the end note of House of Cards?
How did you feel when you finished House of Cards?
How did you come to the decision to orphan House of Cards?
Did you ever anticipate the overwhelming fan reaction to House of Cards?
How do you feel knowing that House of Cards is one of the most read fanfictions on Ao3?
What do you want House of Cards to be remembered for?
What do you hope people take away from House of Cards?
Why do you think House of Cards became so popular?
I had to go back and watch it. It's been some time since I last have, and I'm still as amazed by it now as I was back then. The trailer is insane. I cannot imagine how much work went into making it. It's so good and it fits the vibes of the story to perfection. I think the first time I watched it, I was in shock. I must have repeated it at least 10 times in a row, just to make sure it was real and I wasn't imagining it. Then I think I screamed about it on my social media accounts, haha~ If you reading this have not watched the trailer, consider doing so. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Back when I first started posting fanfics, I used to get a lot of asks wanting to know my name, my pronouns, stuff like that. I thought by adding my name at the end of the stories, it would help cut down on these requests. But I also did so because I used to get a lot of asks referring to me as 'author-nim' and I didn't like being addressed by this honorific. I'm not Korean so I have no right to receive that honorific. So, I included my real name so readers could address me with it when sending me asks and interacting with me. I don't add my name at the end of my stories now, but my name is in my Twitter bio for those that want to know.
When I finished it, I felt relieved! I was so calm in the moment! Looking back on it, I can't remember much. But I do remember finishing House of Cards without any issues. The final chapters flowed smoothly, it all clicked into place, and I had a great time writing them.
I came to the decision to orphan the story after several nights of contemplation. I was considering deleting the story, along with a few others, but my partner and some friends told me I shouldn't do so. They suggested orphaning it instead. So, I did so. I didn't want to delete it in case readers that had started it had not gotten to finish it yet. I would've felt very mean robbing them of the opportunity to finish the story like that. I don't regret orphaning it instead of deleting it. I didn't want to destroy the story, I just needed some distance between me and the story.
I didn't anticipate it, and I still don't understand it! I'm shocked that House of Cards got the reaction that it received. Do I think it's a good story? Yes, I think that I worked hard to create a story that is enjoyable to read. But did I ever think it would get the reaction it did? Not in a million years! I thought that it would be one of my more popular stories because a) the pairings and b) the content. Gang stories usually tend to get a lot of attention because it's a popular genre in fanfiction. I just didn't expect it to reach such a vast amount of hits, kudos and comments.
I'm in shock that it is one of the most read stories on AO3. I don't think I will ever be able to create another story that will garner that kind of attention and feedback. It's a once in a lifetime thing, so I'm immensely proud of myself for achieving such a feat. But really, it's all because of the readers that it achieved such a goal. I'm so thankful for every single one of them.
I just want it to be remembered for being enjoyable, I think. I don't have any grand and lofty ambitions for the story. I think so long as the readers enjoyed it, that is all that matters.
I'm not sure what I would like readers to take away from House of Cards. I guess I want them to reflect on the idea of morality and that not everything is black-and-white. Good people can do bad things, and bad things can happen to good people. It's hard to answer this question because House of Cards isn't a story that I consider to have deep messages in it? There are no messages about acceptance and love and healthy relationships and such, like some of my other stories.
Honestly? I don't know what made it get so popular. I assume it's because of the pairings or the setting of the story. I know that a lot of readers say they love the story because of how well it's written, but I can't comment on that as the creator, haha~ I can't say my story is well-written as I'm not consuming it from an outside perspective. What I can say is that I do think I created a story that has a lot of twists and turns and betrayals, which I think adds to the enjoyment factor.
How are you now in 2020? Are you writing professionally in real life at all?
How do you feel BTS fanfiction has changed over time? Since you’ve been writing for it for so long.
Do you have any messages for people who may read this interview in the future?
I'm not writing professionally. I have self-published two books via Amazon and Lulu. One was a basic re-branding of my story babes in the woods. The other was a total rewrite of Brotherhood, which I called 'Brothers,' featuring a whole new setting and roster of characters. I published them as readers showed an interest in reading original stories. I have been considering rewriting House of Cards as an original work in the future, but I can't say for certain that I will do so.
Since I started writing, I think there's been a lot of changes in the fandom—not only in fanfiction but in general. There's been popular trends that have come and gone (I was around for the explosion of social media and text-based AUs, which I personally am not a fan of) but there's also been a lot of push for more inclusive content. I'm really happy by the amount of inclusive content that I see these days. Despite some pushback from non-queer fans that sometimes have an issue with queer subject matter (for example, trans characters) I think it's wonderful that artists of all colours, genders and sexualities are now proudly creating content they want to see, and not simply just what is 'in demand' from the fandom.
The message that I would like to share with readers of this interview is: stay healthy, stay happy, and most importantly, stay you. I also want to take this moment to tell them this - if you are considering becoming a creator, but you are worried about reception to your work, or that it might not be good enough, stop right now! Stop doubting yourself and just give it a shot! I was once like you, scared that my weird and niche interests and writing would be ignored or even mocked by the fandom because no one would like it. Had I not decided to take the plunge, my life would be so drastically different. I've made so many friends, fallen in love, and completely changed my life by creating fan content. It can be scary, but once you take the leap, you will find your feet coming down on solid earth without any danger.
Thank you for reading this interview. Further below are reminders and information about this interview and Charmseoul’s Fanlore project.
sugamins is still writing on her sugamins Archive of Our Own account today if you are looking for her works. Charmedseoul will not be sharing the author’s social media or contact information.
This interview is a part of the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Archive of our Own Works Project by Charmedseoul. The project documents the works and authors of the top 50 most hit BTS works on Archive of Our Own. All work for this project is done through Fanlore, which is run by the Organization of Transformative Works. However, Charmedseoul herself is not associated with Fanlore or OTW directly. All information documented through this project is done with full transparency.
Authors, works, and fandom culture must be documented for the future. Unauthorized and malicious editing of Fanlore pages will result in a termination of account. Charmedseoul and Fanlore itself protects fandom history’s participants and works. Personal opinion on authors and works may be posted on social media, but may only be quoted and paraphrased on Fanlore.
This interview was conducted through email from September 23, 2020 to October 25th, 2020 with sugamins’ consent and protections under Fanlore’s Identity Protection policies. Unauthorized reposting of this interview is forbidden. Quotation and screenshot share of this interview is allowed.
If you would like to authorize a repost please contact @charmedseoul on Twitter or @charmedseoull on Tumblr. Linking and sharing is appreciated. Translation and unauthorized repost of this interview is forbidden.
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them.
Charmed Seoul. Fandom Historian based on Fanlore.com. Twitter. Tumblr.
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PeppersGhost's Proposal, I guess.
K/O Failure Scenario Hub » SPC-001 » PeppersGhost's Proposal, I guess.
rating: +263+–X
You are now connected.
[13:04] Topic is "Fuck credentials, fuck passwords, fuck secrecy, fuck everything. Just, fuck in general. Fuck like it's the end of the world, because it is. Fuck me, please oh lord im so alone | Welcome! If you're still alive to read this, good luck finding someone to talk to."
[13:04] DrTsega: Hello? Anyone here?
[19:32] DrTsega: I'll take that as a no, then.
[22:48] DrTsega: I can't be the only one left.
[22:49] DrTsega: Hey Queg, are you still running?
[22:49] Queg: Hello, DrTsega. What can I do for you?
[22:49] DrTsega: thank god
[22:50] DrTsega: !backscroll 10
[22:50] Queg: [04:33] SgtYitay: I've looked through the entire building
[22:50] Queg: [04:33] SgtYitay: Everyone is dead
[22:50] Queg: [04:33] AgentCaleb: No shit
[22:50] Queg: [04:33] AgentCaleb: I know nobody uses this thing anyway but DAMN it's been EMPTY
[22:50] Queg: [04:34] AgentCaleb: You think it's just the two of us?
[22:50] Queg: [04:37] AgentCaleb: You still there
[22:50] Queg: [04:39] AgentCaleb: Saaarrrrge
[22:50] Queg: [04:50] SgtYitay has been disconnected (Ping timeout)
[22:50] Queg: [18:22] AgentCaleb: oooookay well i think im gonna call it quits then. If anyone sees this tell my husband I love him
[22:50] Queg: [18:22] AgentCaleb: lol jk i'll see that dogfaced whore in hell 👍🕶👍
[22:51] DrTsega: hmm
[22:52] DrTsega: !seen Agent Caleb
[22:52] Queg: AgentCaleb was last seen 8 days ago saying: lol jk i'll see that dogfaced whore in hell 👍🕶👍
[22:52] DrTsega: shit
[22:53] DrTsega: shitballs
[22:53] DrTsega: shitmonkeys
[22:55] DrTsega: shit the nail on the head
[22:55] DrTsega: okay
[11:16] DrTsega: Good morning. If anyone sees this just ping me, I'll stay around as long as I can.
[09:48] DrTsega: I'm still here
[14:26] DrTsega: !quote CaptSumner
[14:26] Queg: CaptSumner: I may be shitting out of my pee parts but FUCK YOU I will WALK IT OFF
[14:26] DrTsega: haha what
[14:27] DrTsega: Good times, good times.
[14:28] DrTsega: I wish Sumner wasn't lying dead in the bathroom
[14:29] DrTsega: or anywhere, for that matter
[14:33] DrTsega: but especially the bathroom
[08:01] DrTsega: I'm still here
[12:55] DrTsega: Man, if anyone sees this later I'm going to look really pitiful
[05:51] DrTsega: okay I can't sleep so I guess I might as well do this
[05:52] DrTsega: !settopic Check the backscroll. Look for "Start here"
[05:52] Topic is "Check the backscroll. Look for "Start here""
[05:52] DrTsega: Start here
[05:53] DrTsega: If you're still alive to read this, congratulations. You survived.
[05:54] DrTsega: You also have access to working internet and enough knowledge about shadow governments to visit a (previously) private communications channel, so, hey, good on you.
[05:55] DrTsega: As a reward for being such a cool and alive person, I'm going to tell you the story of how we ended the world.
[05:55] DrTsega: For context, though, you'll probably want to start by reading a certain document…
[05:56] DrTsega: Actually, you can probably just skim it. A lot of this won't make sense to you anyway, so who cares?
[05:57] DrTsega: Anyway. I'll go find the link. If memory serves, they declassified everything when they realized we were all gonna die.
[06:13] DrTsega: How are these servers even still up? Isn't that just the craziest thing
[08:22] DrTsega: Found it.
NOTICE FROM THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE COORDINATION
AND PROJECTS OPERATION COMMAND OFFICE
There is nothing new to report regarding SPC-001 at this time.
Test subject displaying the results of his exposure to SPC-001.
Project #: SPC-001
Selachian Pugnātorial Capabilities: Individuals enhanced with SPC-001 display a dramatic improvement in pugilistic prowess and have consistently proven capable of easily dispatching 90% of squaloid entities in simulations, even with no prior training. Furthermore, SPC-001 subjects have reported a radical elevation in coastal requiescence position retention, even when under assault from extragranular sedimentary weaponry.
Project Components: SPC-001 is a manmade chemical substance which augments the biological strength and dexterity of human beings. After initial exposure to SPC-001, subjects will undergo a steady increase in muscle mass over the following 72 hours, accompanied by heightened energy levels and adroit perception of their surroundings. Increased lung capacity and resistance to deep-sea hydrostatic pressure are common side effects.
Following the DREAD PORPOISE COMMUNION and the subsequent activation of the ALL HANDS ON DECK PROTOCOL, SPC agents embedded in the food industry began introducing discreet amounts of SPC-001 into numerous products intended for public consumption. Centre researchers have projected a full global saturation of SPC-001 to be achieved by the year ████. In the event that the DREAD PORPOISE COMMUNION ends before global saturation can be achieved, more aggressive means of SPC-001 dispersal may be undertaken to prevent a complete End-of-World K/O Failure Scenario.
Nascency Impetus: On May 16, ████, all observed selachian entities across the globe simultaneously demanifested, including those in SPC captivity. No selachian entities or evidence of the continued presence of selachian entities have been observed since. A Maximum State of Emergency was declared soon after by the Executive Pugilist Assembly and the phenomenon was codified as the DREAD PORPOISE COMMUNION. It is the belief of the Assembly that the selachians are congregating in preparation for the FINAL CONFLICT, an event foretold by Elder Pugilord Azmanititas in the Centre's original constitutional documents in 1451.
[08:23] DrTsega: Did you get all that?
[08:23] DrTsega: No? Okay, I'll break it down for you.
[08:26] DrTsega: I was part of a group known as the Selachian Punching Centre. An organization dedicated to fighting the menace that plagued our oceans. "We punch underwater so you can live on the land." That's what we used to say.
[08:27] DrTsega: I know what you're thinking.
[08:29] DrTsega: Yes. It was us keeping you safe the entire time. The Centre safeguarded mankind for centuries. Civilization as we knew it wouldn't have been possible if we weren't around. Our influence was unparalleled, extending to every level of every government, changing the course of world events, yet remaining a complete secret from everybody, which was really quite tricky.
Then, one day, the selachian menace disappeared. Our immediate reaction was one of disbelief, followed by euphoria, followed by raucous celebration. We danced. We drank ourselves stupid. We sang the songs of our forefathers. The orgies weren't officially sanctioned, of course, but boy howdy-doo were they tremendous.
Sadly, our revelry wasn't meant to last.
"DREAD PORPOISE COMMUNION", the Assembly called it. The prophesied gathering of every selachian, big or small. Every sharp, slimy, putrid horror that haunted our dreams, coming together in one place to bring about the end of all other life on our beautiful, green planet.
"But fear not," said our trusted Assembly. They told us that the human race would fight back. They said that when the selachians returned with their armies and squaloid murder-drones, we would be ready.
And they were right. We were ready. Thanks to SPC-001, we managed to get the entire human race fighting fit. At first people were alarmed when everyone started getting super ripped for no apparent reason, but then they realized it was awesome and the panic died down. Within a few months, every man, woman, and child was a lean, mean, punching machine. Even babies had abs you could wash your clothes on. It seemed like everything was going fine.
And that's how it went for the first couple of years: fine. Sure, boxing had to be outlawed once folks could punch with the same Newtonian force as your average car crash, and there were a few riots now and then over tank top shortages, but for the most part everything felt normal.
Year three, people started getting antsy. We had kept ourselves busy at the Centre by devising new weapons for selachian warfare, but every innovation felt hollow with a lack of anything to use them on. We grew listless. Surely the assault would begin any day, right?
Year four. There was an aura of dread hanging over the whole organization. I remember sitting in the Site-71 cafeteria, eating pickled cabbage and creamed corn salads with my comrades, when I finally heard someone ask aloud what we'd all wondered in the dark corners of our heads.
"What if they don't come back?"
It was Simmons who said that, of course. Of course. I kicked him in the face—a punch would have really hurt him—but the damage was done. It's a scary thought, losing your purpose in life. Faced with that kind of existential ennui, it's no wonder that everyone responded by flipping their shit. Hersberger screamed and started smearing her salad all over her face. Gertzler stabbed his fork tines into his cheek with no visible emotion. Bühler just broke down and cried until his tears turned to blood.
But Schwartzentruber was downright fuming. Started shouting all sorts of obscenities. Said he'd shove his fist down Simmons' throat and rip out his toenails from the inside. And Simmons was all defensive, "you all were thinking it" and that kind of stuff. The two kept going at it. We shouldn't have just sat there and watched, but no one thought fists would ever get involved. How could we have known?
I remember the entire cafeteria going silent. One moment, the two colleagues had been arguing. Next thing we knew, Schwartzentruber was wearing Simmons' face around his arm like a bracelet. Fist went straight through. Nobody knew what to say. Hersberger just picked the brain matter from her hair. There was no finishing our dinner after something like that.
We all tried to write it off as an isolated incident, an unhinged employee who forgot his own strength in a moment of pure emotion. That illusion was shattered when reports started coming in from the other sites. Similar incidents were happening all over the world, and within a few weeks it wasn't just limited to SPC personnel. These arms were made for punching, and that's just what they did.
As time went on, it became harder for us to fight the itch. Punching bags were laughable at that point, so instead we invented punching blocks out of a titanium-concrete composite. Even fashioned them into the shape of selachians to help take the pain away, but it still wasn’t enough. Whenever we came close to a cure, someone would end up atomizing the equipment with a flick of the wrist and we'd have to start over.
Eventually, one day I walked into the cafeteria and found the floor covered in what must have been two inches of blood. I thought maybe a pipe had burst until I saw Bühler sitting on a table in the corner. Guy was slathered in viscera from top to bottom, and he was wearing human heads around his arms like they were snap bracelets. I asked if he wanted to talk, but he didn't answer. He just stared at his fists and trembled. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was dead, hole in his beefy chest so big I coulda driven my Grampy's Volvo through it.
That was what broke me, I think. I had never seen someone self-pugilate before. I didn't know how many people were still alive in Site-71, but I knew that I would not perpetuate the carnage. I gathered some medical supplies from the surgical augmentations lab and tied a tourniquet around my burgeoning, well-defined bicep. Carefully, I injected myself with the nearest substance that resembled an anesthetic and bid my guns goodbye.
Screaming, writhing, I hacked off my arm using only a pair of rusty toenail clippers. Needless to say, I was dizzy from pain, blood loss, and the 5 CCs of green apple daiquiri I'd injected myself with, but somehow I managed to drag myself back to the cafeteria to cauterize my stump in the kitchen's oven. Barely clinging to consciousness, I set the oven to preheat, wrapped my stump in a tent of foil, and stuck it inside, turning regularly to promote an even cauter and applying a light baste to keep it moist.
When the bleeding stopped, I went back and repeated the process with my other arm. The second time was harder, I think. With no free hands remaining, I was forced to grip the toenail clippers with my teeth. I also ran out of baste. It was the most agonizing experience I could ever possibly fathom, but here I am. Alive. My cannonball deltoids still ripple with pugilistic vigor now and then, but the stubs are too short to be lethal.
And that's it. That's my story. That's how I ended up here, barricaded alone in an underground facility, typing on a keyboard with my tongue. I haven't been able to get in touch with any other Centre sites, and I can't leave the building. Every day I lose a little more hope. My personal hygiene has suffered, too—partly because I can't look at a pair of clippers without bursting into tears. My toenails are getting really long now. I'll probably have to use a pair of scissors or something. I could even use that electric carving knife I got for my birthday. Hell, I think there's a chainsaw in the supply closet. No shortage of options, really.
Even if I'm alive now, there's no telling how long that will last. Sometimes I hear people punching on the reinforced doors, desperate to break in and claim another victim to slake their drunken punchlust. Someday they may succeed. There's enough food left around to keep me going a while, though just for a while. I've kept my mind occupied and my spirits up by watching Dr. Cavender's Walking Dead box sets, but I can feel that post-Season-Six quality drop looming just around the corner.
Maybe this was their plan all along. Maybe they just left the planet, knowing full well we'd destroy ourselves. Maybe when the last human has passed their final breath, the selachians will return from wherever they went and feast on our tight, sculpted corpses. Or maybe they're happier where they are now. Maybe they're not coming back. I hope that's not the case. As much as it pains me to say it: I miss them.
I miss sharks.
[23:19] DrTsega: With all the squats I've been doing, I could probably pop their heads between my fucking thighs.
[23:20] DrTsega: pop 'em just like cherries. hell yeah
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Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?node=340840031&ref_=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?node=340840031&ref_=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://amzn.to/2Wg4OIV=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://amzn.to/2Wg4OIV=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
https://ift.tt/3klB05r
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top��� link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?node=340840031&ref_=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?node=340840031&ref_=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes
Text
Internal Linking for Mobile-First & Mobile-Only Indexing
Three years ago, I wrote a post for the Moz Blog advising how the latest news on mobile-first indexing would impact internal linking strategies, particularly for larger sites.
“By now, you’ve probably heard as much as you can bear about mobile first indexing”, I joked in my introduction. Little did I know.
Only now — in the summer of 2021 — are Google, supposedly, maybe, finalizing the rollout of mobile-first. Even as of August 2021, Google is still very much actively crawling sites with Googlebot desktop*.
As with the recent delays to the Core Web Vitals rollout, the issue here for Google is that they can’t push changes which make their results worse. As Mike King pointed out back in March over at iPullRank, there’s still a big disparity between the mobile and desktop versions of the web, especially when it comes to links.
I don’t need to persuade most SEOs that they should care about links, but I maybe do need to remind you that internal links are, for most pages, a much bigger part of how they get their strength than external links. On an even vaguely established site, it’s not unreasonable to think that including a landing page in your top nav is going to generate more impactful links than most digital PR campaigns could ever hope to. And yet, sites tend to focus disproportionately on the latter, which is perhaps what brings us to this conundrum today.
In this post, I’m going to point out some of the common causes of disparities between mobile and desktop internal linking, when you should care, and what you can do to fix these issues without throwing UX under the bus.
*(thanks to Dom Woodman and the wealth of data at his fingertips for confirming for me that this is still the case!)
A brief history of mobile-first
Back in 2015, SEOs had two months’ warning to prepare for what the industry nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”. This wasn’t the first time that Google had factored mobile friendliness into its rankings, but it was probably the first time they tried to make a really big deal out of it as a way of steering webmasters — a sign of things to come.
About 18 months later, in November 2016, we got the phrase “Mobile-first indexing”. Over the next few years, SEOs with access to multiple Search Console properties became familiar with the routine trickle of emails informing them of sites moving over to the new paradigm.
During this period, some SEOs, including the late Russ Jones, myself in the aforementioned post on the Moz Blog, and my old boss Will Critchlow, started to voice concerns about the potential impact on the linkgraph:
The overall impression at the time was that Google was using a hybrid index for now, but that “mobile only” was already on its way.
Fast forward to March 2020, and Google warned we had six months to prepare for the final toll of the desktop index. This initially suggested a September 2020 rollout, then that became March 2021, and then, as I’ve mentioned above, that date too seemed to pass without incident.
We should assume, though, that this is still coming, or perhaps largely already here, and as such that our mobile sites need to present the version of truth we want Google to see.
The roles of internal links
Internal links, like all other links, fulfill multiple vital functions:
Allowing search engines to discover new URLs
Passing on clues as to topical relevance, via their anchor text, and source URL
Passing on authority, via PageRank or equivalent
That’s of course without even getting into their roles in user experience, which is a topic for another post. (Although if you want to learn more about internal links, I recommend this Whiteboard Friday.)
A disparity in internal links between desktop and mobile versions, then, is likely to have far-reaching implications. (This also goes for any other two versions, such as rendered and raw HTML.) In most cases, one of the two versions will be the one that the site’s SEO practitioner(s) were happy with, and as such the other will not be.
At this point it’s common best practice, at least for your major templates, to routinely produce a list of links from both versions of the page and look for discrepancies.
That said, some differences are more impactful than others. For illustrative purposes, I’ve compared the desktop and mobile versions of five homepages, and in the rest of this post I’ll discuss some of the more interesting differences I noted, and what I’d recommend to the respective sites. Just to be clear: I am not involved with, or indeed pitching, any of these sites.
The five homepages I looked at were:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ — the UK site of the global e-com juggernaut
https://www.optimizely.com/ — the well known CRO software
https://www.ebuyer.com/ — an electronics e-commerce site
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/ — a UK real estate site, similar to the US’s Zillow
https://www.nytimes.com/ — an American broadsheet newspaper
Interestingly, of these, two had no differences at all for us to discuss — congratulations to Optimizely and Zoopla for paying attention back in 2018. For the other three, read on...
Less harmful examples
Anchor links within a page
The Amazon UK homepage links to itself no fewer than six times, with anchor text such as “back to top”, “see product details”, and “next page” (within a carousel). These links are all unique to desktop, although the mobile version does have a “Top of page” link instead of the “Back to top” link.
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
You probably don’t need to be too concerned about links like these from an SEO perspective. There’s no dramatic difference in optimization or targeting implied by the different text, and pages linking to themselves probably aren’t going to reshape the linkgraph.
Links to non-indexed pages
Amazon UK desktop (top) vs. Amazon UK mobile (bottom)
The main nav link to the “Pet supplies” category on the Amazon UK homepage comes with different internal tracking tags on mobile vs. desktop:
Desktop: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=nav_em__ps_t2_0_2_14_24
Mobile: https://ift.tt/3jhR20M=navm_em__pets_0_3_17_11
From a general SEO perspective, this isn’t an ideal way to handle internal link tracking — both of these URLs have a canonical tag pointing at the actual indexed page, but there’s still unnecessary dilution and wasted crawl budget here, compared to just tracking the link click using a JavaScript event listener.
However, from a specific mobile/desktop parity point of view, this isn’t a big deal. As I said, they both share a canonical tag pointing to the same place, so we end up with equivalent behavior.
A similar rule applies when linking to pages like “my account” or “basket” — there may be differences in desktop and mobile implementations, but as both pages are noindex and/or robots.txt blocked, it isn’t a big deal.
Anchor text
Ebuyer has a few instances of the same element using different anchor text on mobile vs. desktop:
Ebuyer desktop (top) vs. Ebuyer mobile (bottom)
Note the longer anchor text on mobile(!). I also noticed something similar on the New York Times site, although that may be due to them rapidly testing different headline variants.
Either way, I don’t think this is a huge deal as long as the behavior is intended and the implied topic is largely similar, which it is in these cases.
Common problems & solutions
Device-specific elements
One of the most common causes of disparity is navigation elements that are desktop-only. The example below is from Ebuyer, and shows a bunch of links that I was unable to find anywhere on their mobile homepage.
These links all point to URLs that also feature in the top-nav, so the impact on the link graph may not be huge. However, Google is likely to place different weightings on a prominent homepage link like this vs. a link buried in a navigation, so there are SEO implications to this disparity. Ebuyer’s desktop site implies that these are some of the most important subcategories on the site, whereas their mobile site gives them a more equal footing with other subcategories in the mega-menu.
Happening across millions of sites, this is the sort of issue that might impact the quality of Google’s results. Ebuyer has presumably featured here the categories that are core to their business, and if they rank slightly better in these cases than in other cases, that means Google is slightly more likely to show people results from a business that is highly competent in that area. That, from Google’s perspective, is surely a win, but one they miss out on by exclusively using the mobile version.
From Ebuyer’s point of view, the choice of what to feature in this element is a strategic lever that is lost when Google stops counting their desktop links. The only real solution here is to develop a mobile equivalent to this element, but one can be creative. It could be somewhere slightly different on the page, for example, or it could be a carousel on mobile but static on desktop. Alternatively, you can accept that this is a desktop-specific UX element that should be disregarded in any SEO consideration, and instead must justify itself through its benefit to conversion rates.
Mega-menus & subcategory linking
Many sites, especially e-commerce, handle internal linking by having a huge mega-menu on desktop that collapses into a hamburger menu perhaps four layers deep on mobile. This leaves users very many clicks from anything they might hope to find, and the ironic thing is that super-exhaustive top navigations aren’t necessarily optimal from an SEO perspective either. Sure, they get a lot of pages crawled and pass on a little equity, but they do nothing to concentrate relevance around subtopics, and they don’t allow you to focus your strength where it’s most needed.
Some sites improve on this with a section-specific subnavigation, for example these links on Amazon that only appear within the Grocery section:
This is a great alternative to a mega-menu in general, in that there are fewer sitewide links (meaning that each remaining sitewide link is a little stronger), and, proportionately, more links between closely related pages.
However, of course, this element doesn’t appear at all on mobile. D’oh.
Similarly, Amazon has these featured subcategories on desktop, performing a similar role:
Again, I’d say this is a great idea from an SEO perspective, but these links don’t exist on mobile.
Zoopla handles the same issue much more neatly:
Sidebar links to relevant subcategories
They similarly have subcategory links that only feature in the relevant category, but then on mobile, they retain them — just moving them to the bottom of the page instead of a sidebar:
Sidebar links shuffled to bottom of content on mobile
This isn’t hugely attractive, but it doesn’t matter — few people will scroll to these depths anyway, and Zoopla’s SEO strategy is robust to the mobile-only index as a result. Plus, because of the focus on interlinking only relevant subcategories, the volume of links here isn’t extreme.
SEO copy & hidden content
A similar argument could be made for Ebuyer’s treatment of SEO copy here:
It’s right at the bottom of the page, so perhaps this is an opportunity for internal linking? Indeed, there are a couple of links at the end of this block of text.
Without going too much into the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of copy in general, I’d say this is a little excessive for the bottom of an e-commerce category page (you can only see a fraction in the screenshot above). Instead, Ebuyer could do something similar to what they’ve done with their footer:
Collapsed or tabbed content can be a great way to handle bulky internal linking structures on mobile
On desktop, all of these footer sections are expanded by default, and all visible. On mobile, they’re hidden in these expandable sections. This is generally a good way to handle SEO elements on mobile, as Google has said repeatedly at this point that there’s no downside to doing this.
Conclusion: On-page linking, but tastefully
I’ve tried to explore here some of the common issues that sites face when aiming for mobile/desktop linking parity.
To quickly recap, the main issues I recommend sites focus on are:
Missing navigation elements
Opportunities for deep-linking without resorting to mega-menus
And my suggested solutions are:
Pushing linking widgets to the bottom of the page on mobile, rather than removing them altogether
Using tabs, carousels, expandable sections and other creative solutions to make better use of on-screen real estate
I’m keen to see more examples in the wild, though — how is your site handling mobile-first internal linking? Tell me on Twitter!
0 notes