Question About Table of Contents

I

I'm Kate

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Can anyone advise on the best way to display a TOC?

Is open or closed, better for user experience?

And does either choice have any impact on SEO?

I've published my posts so far with the TOC open, but on long posts with lots of subheadings, it takes up space, and looks clunky to me.

When I land on other sites displaying a TOC, I tend to skip right past it, but I know I'm very much a sample of one.

What are your thoughts? If any.

Thanks :)
 
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Maybe reduce your subheadings a bit more. You want the toc to be a quick way of them getting to the content. It should be simple not something that puts them off thinking there is too much on the page to read. Even though really we all want the most comprehensive content, the average reader is just that, average. They don't want to think that there is a novel to read ahead of them. Just a quick link easy to see in the toc will do. Think of how you could maybe combine some of your subheadings into more generalized headings if it's really too big. That might be some things to think about.
 
Yes, If the content has lots of subheadings, It takes more space on that page, But If you add the open TOC It will present a good user experience,

Users can easily be known those article concepts, If the user liked any of the subheadings, Then It'll convenient to click and jump to read that paragraph, So my suggestion is you can do open TOC.
 
Thanks for your input guys :)

Based on your advice, I'll leave it open.

And on longer articles, I'll switch some H2's to H3's which won't show on the TOC.
 
Easy, only display H2s.
 
I'm Kate said:
Already am.
Click to expand...
Then the problem is you are using too many H2s. Unless you are writing a super high quality 6K to 10K article, you shouldn't place that many H2s in one article reasonably.
Either you abuse the H2s or your structure needs improvement.
just my .2s
 
Yes, impact On seo
 
I've had good luck with open TOC

It depends on how you structure your content.

Putting headings in your article shouldn't be done just for appearance.

Sure, it may look pretty, but each heading must push the reader in a certain direction.

It also makes promises that the content must deliver.

Finally, well-crafted headings are supposed to help you deliver an overall positive experience.

Sadly, many writers completely ignore this or don't know about these factors.

They focus on keywords, and everything is disjointed.

It's a mess.

When flesh and blood human users look at the TOC, they're confused.

What do confused consumers do? Hit the back button.

If you let this happen enough times, your user experience might suffer to the point that Google will degrade your rankings.

Not good.
 
Closing TOC is better. If people want to the TOC, they will open.
 
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