Does 'jump to' navigation work with a hidden div?
-
Will jump to navigation work when using a hidden div? Basically, we use a navigation system such that when a user clicks on a title, it expands to show the rest of the article, each title has an anchor associated with it, but no where else on the page / site do we link to those anchors.
In order to make jump to navigation work, we are considering adding a hidden div with links to the anchors. Does anyone have experience doing this? Did it work?
-
The best I can think of would be to link to the anchors from the page the "level" above.
In other words, on a category page (or equivalent), display links to the page plus its named anchors (actually, much like Google's sitelinks). It's impossible to weigh up the relative weight of links from within the page to links from elsewhere on the site without inside knowledge, but I would prefer this to hidden links.
-
Hi WIll,
Yes, I understand that 'jump to navigation' is determined algorithmically.
We can't actually link to the anchors because, as mentioned, the UI we've developed has better user engagement (one of our main goals is to improve user engagement site-wide). The anchors exist in a sort of expand / collapse format, so that the user can see the entire content and click on titles to see more.
I suppose the other option would be to put it in a hidden div, and add javascript so that the user could see the links if they wanted (even though, essentially, there isn't any value-add to the user since they can already see the content list)?
-
Firstly, it isn't automatic for Google to add links to your in-page anchors no matter what you do.
It's hard to say for sure whether placing hidden links to the named anchors will work in your specific case - but I would say that if it does work, I'd view it as a short-term solution and probably more risky than I'd like to see for limited reward.
Why not actually link to the anchors? If you think that people might want to jump direct to them from the search results, mightn't people want to navigate to them when they're on your site as well?
There is essentially never a good reason for hiding information that you want Google to find - it should be there for the users as well.
-
Mainly, would google use 'jump to' sections of our page in the SERPs. We have anchors, but no links to the anchors, and are hoping that by adding a hidden div with links to the anchors, it will activate 'jump to navigation.'
The hidden div would be added just for the sake of adding the links to the anchors--it wouldn't be visible to users. We've found user engagement is higher for the type of navigation we built, but want to make sure 'jump to' works (is visiible in google SERPs).
Thanks in advance for your help.
-
Hi Michelle,
What do you mean by "work"? Are you intending to have a way of exposing this hidden div (in a drop-down or similar)?
One of the most common uses of jump to navigation is for screen readers for the visually-impaired. I imagine that a hidden div could work well for that as they typically ignore CSS styling but I imagine it would need testing in the specific readers.
Happy to dig into this further if you have more info about your plans.
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
-
XML Sitemap works fine in GWT, but does not show in SERP
XML Sitemap works properly in GWT, but when I run a search in Google for "site:example.com/sitemap.xml" it does not show. However, my XML image sitemap show when I run the same search in Google. Is this potentially an issue on my end and is there a solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Can links be hidden?
I was wondering if anyone can help me with some advice on agency work. We have just employed a new SEO agency to conduct work on one of our websites. I took a look on OSE and GWT to see if we had any new links since the agency started working (1 month ago) but there's was nothing new. When l asked for an update as to what link building efforts had been completed last month, l was told they don't give out a list of links as it could compromise the agencies techniques. They told me that they use software to hide links form link aggregators so that our competitors don't know what we are doing. Can anybody confirm that such software exists or is this agency just taking us for a ride? If there is such a software, could this not hinder what links the search engines could see? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
How to find 20 hidden 404s
Hello, We have like twenty 404s left to find. How do you find these when: 1. They don't show up in Google Webmaster Tools 2. They don't have any other internal or external pages linking to them. 3. They don't show up in site:domain.com (We have 9000 pages and only 600 show up - I fixed those out of the 600). 4. They are probably causing high bounce rates. 5. They're not in the sitemap Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Do Q&A 's work for SEO
If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Google's serp
Hello Guys ! I will appreciate if you will share your thoughts re the situation i have. The homepage for one of my sites is one last page of google's serp, although internal pages are displayed in the top 10. 1. Why ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
2. What should I do to correct the situation with the homepage ? regards0 -
Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?
After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website. Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake. Our original site,(call it mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the engine in the old one. We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page. There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net. Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign. All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new. We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again. We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net. My questions are: 1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go? 2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html ? Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site? It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site. 3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block? Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help 4. What have I forgotten? Cheers, all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Will implementing a 'Scroll to Div Anchor' cause a duplicate content issue?
I have just been building a website for a client with pages that contain a lot of text content. To make things easier for site visitors I have created a menu bar that sticks to the top of the page and the page will scroll to different areas of content (i/e different Div id anchors) Having done this I have just had the thought that this might inadvertently introduce duplicate content issue. Does anyone know if adding an #anchor to the end of a url will cause a duplicate content error in google? For example, would the following URLs be treated as different:- http://www.mysite.co.uk/services
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.mysite.co.uk/services#anchor1
http://www.mysite.co.uk/services#anchor2
http://www.mysite.co.uk/services#anchor3
http://www.mysite.co.uk/services#anchor4 Thanks.0 -
SEO for Global Navigations
I did my first SEO audit from the book SEO Secrets by Danny Dover on my new website at http://melo4.melotec.com:4010/ In the book he says to disable Javascript and see if the global navigation still works. So when I did that the dropdown menus in my navigation don't show. I'm assuming this is a problem but when I check the cache text only version of the site, the dropdowns are in the text only version. Are their any experienced SEO's out their who can weigh in on this issue? Should I have my developer redo the navigation without any javascript? Thanks, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0