Does the use of sliders for text-on-page, effects SEO in any way?
-
The concept of using text sliders in an e-commerce site as a solution to placing SEO text above or in between product and high on ages, seems too good to be true.... or is it?
How would a text slider for FAQ or other on-page text done with sliding paragraphs (similar but not this specific code- http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2010/08/dynamic-faq-jquery-yql-google-docs/faq.html) might effect text-on-page SEO. Does Google consider it hidden text?
Would there be any other concerns or best practices with this design concept?
-
Fredrik,
This is very helpful and gives me a clearer understanding as to how to make this work properly. The example was just that, and meant to explain basic functionality. We'll make sure we end up using an index-able HTML based version.
Much thanks for your advise.
ron
-
Hi Ron
As Paul stated there are many ways of doing sliders. Most of the new sliders out there do work with JavaScript but often used already loaded dom elements for the slides. That means that the actual content is in the HTML and the JavaScript is used to animate or style them. This content would then be indexed just as a normal div would.
You can also use http://www.seobrowser.com/, (simple option is free) to see the page as Google would see it. If you then can read your content it should be possible to index it.
One thing to think of is that sliders, as the name implies, often contains more than one slide. If the slider has a heading in it it might be a good thing to make the first heading H1 and secondary sliders H2. This way you can place your most important content in the first slide.
Not sure if you use Jquery but if you do http://jquerytools.org/ offer great power and flexibility. Please note that I am NOT connected to them or work for them. We have just used their scripts on variious of our projects.
I had a quick look at your example and unfortunetely that would have a very hard time getting indexed since content is in the javascript. I would consider putting all content in the HTML and then just hide and show sections using Jquery instead.
Have a great day and good luck
Fredrik
-
Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for the detailed answer. deep down i worried this might be the case.
The truth is that the text in question is pretty much for SEO reasons only. Do you know f a better way, or another kind of script that would serve to have the text indexed?
Ron
-
The answer is that it actually depends very much on exactly what kind of coding is used to accomplish the effect, Ron.
In most cases, this kind of slider effect is accomplished using some variation of JavaScript. While Google has said it is "trying" to have it's crawlers recognize text from scripts, it almost never works that way.
So it won't be flagged as "hidden" text, because in fact Google won't even consider it to exist on the page.
An easy way to test is to view the source for the page in question - you'll see that none of the words of text actually exist on the page in any form, even in the code.
For the ultimate example of this - go into Google Webmaster Tools and use the Fetch as Googlebot tool to fetch the page. Then you'll see exactly the content that googlebot will see. It won't see the text, therefor it can't index and rank it. Ergo no SEO benefit at all.
Where you could get into trouble is if you did have text on the page designed to make googlebot think the page is about one thing, while using this kind of scripted text to try to show the visitor something completely different and unrelated. Google could then suspect you of cloaking and penalize accordingly. (Cloaking is when you intentionally show googlebot one thing and the user something different for nefarious purposes)
But if you're adding the text as a usability enhancement for your visitors in a way that googlebot doesn't happen to understand, you won't get any SEO benefit from it, but you also shouldn't be penalized for it.
Paul
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's the best way to test Angular JS heavy page for SEO?
Hi Moz community, Our tech team has recently decided to try switching our product pages to be JavaScript dependent, this includes links, product descriptions and things like breadcrumbs in JS. Given my concerns, they will create a proof of concept with a few product pages in a QA environment so I can test the SEO implications of these changes. They are planning to use Angular 5 client side rendering without any prerendering. I suggested universal but they said the lift was too great, so we're testing to see if this works. I've read a lot of the articles in this guide to all things SEO and JS and am fairly confident in understanding when a site uses JS and how to troubleshoot to make sure everything is getting crawled and indexed. https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/javascript-seo-resources/ However, I am not sure I'll be able to test the QA pages since they aren't indexable and lives behind a login. I will be able to crawl the page using Screaming Frog but that's generally regarded as what a crawler should be able to crawl and not really what Googlebot will actually be able to crawl and index. Any thoughts on this, is this concern valid? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Static or dynamic category pages for seo
Hi, I'm developing an accommodation site with a limited number of properties in 8 categories. I had been looking at making the properties blog posts and then using category function to show lists but its going to require a lot of customisation and I have seo concerns about the dynamic content as the category page is crucial. As I don't have a lot to add and listings will remain the same my latest thought was to create all as pages. However if I create a page with a list of 12 properties on a category page is there anyway of adding some sorting criteria to that page (would be 7 options - swimming pool, near beach, on site creche, budget, mid-range, luxury) Thanks for any tips Neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Is it easier to rank high with a front page than a landing page?
My product is laptop and of cause, I like to rank high for the keyword "laptop". Do any of you know if the search engines tends to rank a front page higher than a landing page? Eg. www.brand.com vs. www.brand.com/laptop
Technical SEO | | Debitoor0 -
Can Not Save the SEO Settings on Attachement/Media Page
I am trying to save SEO settings to a wordpress gallery attachment page for a picture. When I fill up all info and hit save all the writing disappear from from the form. Is it a software bug or there is a solution for it??
Technical SEO | | ExpertSolutions0 -
How can I see the SEO of a URL? I need to know the progress of a specific landing-page of my web. Not a keyword, an url please. Thanks.
I need to know the evolution on SEO of a specific landing-page (an URL) of my web. Not a keyword, a url. Thanks. (Necesito saber si es posible averiguar el progreso de una URL específica en el posicionamiento de Google. Es decir, lo que hace SEOmoz con las palabras clave pero al revés. Yo tengo una url concreta que quiero posicionar en las primeras posiciones de Google pero quiero ver cómo va progresando en función a los cambios que le voy aplicando. Muchas gracias)
Technical SEO | | online_admiral0 -
132 pages reported as having Duplicate Page Content but I'm not sure where to go to fix the problems?
I am seeing “Duplicate Page Content” coming up in our
Technical SEO | | danatanseo
reports on SEOMOZ.org Here’s an example: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/williams-sound-ppa-r35-e http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/aphex-230-master-voice-channel-processor http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/AT-AE4100.prod These three pages are for completely unrelated products.
They are returning “200” status codes, but are being identified as having
duplicate page content. It appears these are all going to the home page, but it’s
an odd version of the home page because there’s no title. I would understand if these pages 301-redirected to the home page if they were obsolete products, but it's not a 301-redirect. The referring page is
listed as: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators None of the 3 links in question appear anywhere on that page. It's puzzling. We have 132 of these. Can anyone help me figure out
why this is happening and how best to fix it? Thanks!0 -
According to 1 of my PRO campaigns - I have 250+ pages with Duplicate Content - Could my empty 'tag' pages be to blame?
Like I said, my one of my moz reports is showing 250+ pages with duplicate content. should I just delete the tag pages? Is that worth my time? how do I alert SEOmoz that the changes have been made, so that they show up in my next report?
Technical SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Is there a way I can track Arabic keywords on the Arabic version of Google Qatar using SEOMOZ Rank checker?
I have a Qatari website in Arabic and I would like to know if it is possible to track the Arabic keywords using google.com.qa in Arabic using SEOMoz rank checker. When selecting the three search engines, I have no choice over the language. Only the country can be modified. Any solution?
Technical SEO | | mrlee1