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I have a simple browser based game. The gameplay is super simple - you just click a few times and get a result.

After getting the result, many users may want to have another try (because there are some random events during the clicking).

I have two ways to design the page:

  1. put a <a> link and let it link to the page itself. When a user clicks the link, the whole page just reloads.
  2. develop some JavaScript code to make the game replayable without reloading the whole game.

Which one is better for SEO? #1 would be much easier for me to develop so if the two ways are almost the same, I'd surely choose #1.

Maximillian Laumeister
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AGamePlayer
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1 Answers1

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Neither of these methods will cause any SEO issues. The crawlers aren't smart enough to play your game, and links that self-link to the same page are perfectly acceptable (an example is the title of your question on this Q&A page).

Don't overthink it!

Maximillian Laumeister
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  • Thanks for your answer sir! I am worried also because linking back would cause a loss of on-page time-duration and if people keep using "replay", the time-duration would be very long. I don't know how Google counts that. – AGamePlayer Sep 26 '21 at 01:22
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    Time on page does not affect SEO at all. If you're not using Google Analytics, then Google doesn't even have any way to track it (because the user has left google search entirely by that point). If you are using analytics, rest assured that Google won't penalize you just because you put Analytics on your page and gave them duration data. – Maximillian Laumeister Sep 26 '21 at 02:16
  • Thanks for the fast reply. But is there any reference for Time on page does not affect SEO at all - I read a lot of posts saying that visit duration is a very important role. Is there any other better metrics for Google to determine which page is better? – AGamePlayer Sep 26 '21 at 11:39
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    I believe you are confusing time on page (time between page loads) with dwell time (time between the user returning to search results). Refreshing a page isn't the same as a user returning to search results, so it's not something that Google measures for ranking. So visit duration only matters in the specific case that the user leaves to go back to the search result page, any article that says otherwise is incorrect. I've found that the top metric Google uses for ranking is high quality backlinks, here is a post with more details. – Maximillian Laumeister Sep 26 '21 at 16:36