Does "Table of Contents" help?

[PaulEchere]

Hi,

I have recently seen several mentions (various random SEO related articles and videos) of the fact that having a "Table of Contents" kind of thing around the top of your page might improve rankings.

It does make sense that it might improve overall user experience and may allow people to find what they need or what you want them to find. But the fact that it may improve positions doesn't rally make an awful lot of sense to me, even if it does I doubt that anyone would actually know (apart from Google) that it is a ranking factor.

I've tried looking for any mention of this by Google reps, quotes, tweets, etc. but found nothing, so was wondering if mby anyone seen anything about this being a ranking factor.

[statsdrone]

short answer yes for user experience. Anything that benefits users and keeps them engaged and not going back to Google will help.

https://searchengineland.com/pro-tip...-search-336615

[gm2891]

Personally I don't think it helps your site rankings, however it is a good practice to have one. See these sites below they have close to a million visitors a day each and they are not bothered about TOC.

These people, i guess certainly know what they're doing, and if it would help ranking in any way, the table would have been there:

-- https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-samsung-phones
-- https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-samsung-phone

[chaumi]

In the absence of any hard proof, and (thx to GM) obvious examples where it has no impact (all be it perhaps worth noting the authority in the tech niches that those have, potentially they could publish 20 words and an image and rank!!

I think it may be valuable to look at this from two perspectives - does it hurt and might it help.

1.Does it hurt?

I've seen no evidence of this anywhere (disclaimer, coming in a minute).........


2. Might it help?

i. We know that user experience and interaction is going to have some impacts. A TOC may help with this (as Statsdrone mentioned)
ii. We know that keyword density plays a part. So - when you implement a TOC - you're essentially adding to (or subtracting from) keyword density of the page, and that could be across multiple kw variations.
iii. There are also examples in SERPs (or have been in the past) where it seemed the TOC headings may have been impacting the display of additional jump links


All of which suggests that - while there seems to be no obvious evidence that just having a TOC per se has any value - there is reasonable evidence, and from different perspectives, that having one may give benefits that outweigh not having one (in the appropriate circumstances of course, and also taking note of the potential to affect densities positively or negatively).

[John Cena]

I think it's helpful, the table of contents helps you to better rank featured posts.

[CasinosBroker]

In my opinion, it helps for UX - it allows the visitor to read content which actually interests him.

Meaning if you have 10 headers in table of content, and user wishes to read the only at the 7th header (title) - he will click on it, saving him time...

If UX is good, and Google is satisfied with the UX you have on your website - logically it will help a little bit in rankings.

[CasinoVIPOffers]

Personally, I think it has its pros and cons. It would help a long for long content and people can browse through sections that interests them but not short ones.

[wonderpunter]

Most of what you read online is from 2004.. even a lot of modern stuff is based on rehashed old articles.. whats important is to have a search box

[chaumi]

Most of what you read online is from 2004.. even a lot of modern stuff is based on rehashed old articles..

Even some old stuff is still relevant. You can (should) never carte blanche just believe everything you read...but keep an open mind (where clearly sensible to do so) and test. And always note that a test on one page that has negative or positive results may not give the same results on another page because of other factors that may be impacting one or the other.

whats important is to have a search box

You mean a site search? A current page search? Or both?

[bi6liotekar]

As for ranking, it greatly increases your CTR, because links to items from the Table of Contents are added to the snippet in SERP.

[PaulEchere]

With all the input above, I thought it might make sense to expand the initial question a bit.

Some context: I have implemented something like a table of content on some pages, although it is not explicitly titled (with any headings) as one. It's pretty much like and overview section with some key points and links to other on-page sections. I did notice that this gives a slight improvement in how visitors interact with the content.

As a lot of people mentioned, Google might use your table of content to enrich the SERP snippet. So the question is how explicit should you be in pointing out that "this is the table of contents"?

[chaumi]

With all the input above, I thought it might make sense to expand the initial question a bit.

Some context: I have implemented something like a table of content on some pages, although it is not explicitly titled (with any headings) as one. It's pretty much like and overview section with some key points and links to other on-page sections. I did notice that this gives a slight improvement in how visitors interact with the content.

As a lot of people mentioned, Google might use your table of content to enrich the SERP snippet. So the question is how explicit should you be in pointing out that "this is the table of contents"?

I'm not sure anyone is going to have a perfect answer for this (certainly I don't)...because there doesn't seem to be any overriding indication (or at least it's eluded me if there is one) of why some jumplinks show in search and some don't. It seems to be random...but ofc there are probably some factors at play in the algorithm that sets it off.


But this may be a useful example that will help. I just found it on the first search I tried......the page is ranked 1 for a very lucrative term behind 3 or 4 ads.

In the SERPs, it shows 4 jumplinks.
But when you go to the page, those are NOT in a TOC
They are a simple bullet point list, high up on the page and obviously hyperlinked to lower sections on the page. Just the list, nothing other than <li></li> in code.

The next page down (number 2) also shows jumplinks. In this case not even hyperlinks, just pure H2s. It's the (slightly truncated) h2s that show as the jumplinks



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I guess with further searches I might find one where it's the TOC headings/links that show in SERPs...but no time to play further.

But clearly, what this proves is that it's definitely not limited to TOC headings and it's possible your approach might work

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Re the question, I've seen plenty of pages ranked (highly) that have TOCs and some sort of descriptive indicator in related code