Hiding Text in an SEO friendly way - is it possible?
-
Hello,
I have a client who has very little (practically no) text content on his ecommerce website, on the home page and category / sub cat pages. We have drafted some text for him - but the designer has fought back against this as he feels it will break the design.
Our proposed solution is to have some text visible - and the rest will be text that is hidden but can be revealed by clicking Read More.
We are planning to follow these recommendations : http://www.shimonsandler.com/collapsible-div-seo-friendly/
We are not hiding text for the sake of it - but more to improve the UX. We of course want the text to be accessible - i.e. readable by screen readers.
Does anyone have any experience or opinions in respect to taking this course of action, and is there anything we should make sure we either do or not do to stay on the side of the BIG G?
Kind Regs,
Rich
-
This is gold dust - THANK YOU!!
-
Thanks Michael.
I agree completely. We are just trying to find a way to tick both boxes, UX and SEO - both of which, of course, are intricately connected. So an SEO friendly text reveal function seems like a good strategy all round. We are certainly not trying to hide text from users, and include it solely for SE's. I am just keen we do it in a way that is accessible and not in breach of Google's guidelines.
I usually push my opinion through and make sure there is text on the page, even if it looks ugly in a designers opinion. Because, ultimately, a site without traffic is not worth a whole lot, even if it looks amazing!
RB
-
Michael,
These are very clear steps that could be applied by many people in various situations.
You are a great leader !
Nice work!
E
-
Hi Rich,
Here you are not hiding anything for the fact. Hiding text is something else that would involve matching the color of the text with that of the background etc. Here you are just tying to make a better UX by having the Read More button that will reveal the content. The content is very much there on the same page and your intention is very clear here. Believe me my friend, Google has mastered the art of finding out the intentions of Webmasters by looking at the page and you will not have to bother about anything in this case.
Regards,
Devanur.
-
Clear and direct. The solution is change the designer.
-
Just to add to this.
A designers job is to design for content and design to make what they are creating successful.
I would start with informing the designer of the intended goals of the site. Then have a discussion around how they feel the current design they have created is accomplishing that.
If there are any holes in the design accomplishing those goals - then a discussion can take place on how strategy, content and design can come together.
The key is to help your designer understand this and lead the team to success.
If none of that works, talk to the owner and pull rank on the designer. Clients speak and think in terms of results - so make your case.
All you can do is provide thought leadership, fight for what you believe in and don't get pushed around or marginalized for common sense recommendations.
If no one wants to listen, you've just found a client not worth working for.
(But remember, it is your thought leadership and sensitivity to everyone's role that makes or breaks it, whether it be the owner, designer, developer, etc.)
Good luck!
-
:):) well said.
-
We have drafted some text for him - but the designer has fought back against this as he feels it will break the design.
I would not be able to have this person as a designer for one of my sites.
This person is not "on board" and I don't have time to pull his teeth.
Nuf said.
-
Hi Rich,
I think just this one act of hiding text will not get you in trouble however if you combine this with other black hat techniques or your site exhibits spammy behavior then you're definitely in trouble. If one is able to access all the content in a text only browser then you should be ok. I would still try and educate the client on having a small block of introductory text above the product and category pages that would also help with conversions.
Her's the official link on hidden text by Google.
Jill Whalen's forum addresses this question here
Here's another link on this topic
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
-
Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new. Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spiros.im0 -
Onsite search engines that are SEO friendly - which do you recommend
Hi - I am seeking an onsite search engine that is SEO friendly - which do you recommend? And has anyone tried doofinder.com - that specific search engine - if you have, is it well aligned/attuned to the SEO aspects of your site? Thanks as ever, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
How do I optimize dynamic content for SEO?
Hello, folks! I'm wondering how I optimize a site if it is built on a platform that works based on dynamic content. For example, the page pulls in certain information based on the information it has about the user. Not every user will see the same page. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geonetric
Lindsey0 -
SEO Consult?
Is there anyone here that I can pay to give me a deep analysis of my website and my competitors with recommendation on what to do? I am a small business and I cannot afford expensive monthly SEO fees. I can probably afford a one time consult fee, then I can do the work myself. Or maybe I can pay a-la cart for some of the fixes. I understand this may not be something SEOs want to do since they make their money off doing the work and may not want to share trade secrets. I just thought I would throw that question out there. I've been working on trying to SEO my site for a year now... I was improving and happy with my progress until October and lost 30 positions over my tracked keywords. I have no idea why. I'm kind of at my wits end! 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
How to Hide Directories in Search?
I noticed bad 404 error links in Google Webmaster Tools and they were pointing to directories that do not have an actual page, but hold information. Ex: there are links pointing to our PDF folder which holds all of our pdf documents. If i type in , example.com/pdf/ it brings up a unformated webpage that displays all of our PDF links. How do I prevent this from happening. Right now I am blocking these in my robots.txt file, but if i type them in, they still appear. Or should I not worry about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hfranz0 -
Are dropdown menus bad for SEO
I have an ecommerce shop here: http://m00.biz/UHuGGC I've added a submenu for each major category and subcategory of items for sale. There are over 60 categories on that submenu. I've heard that loading this (and the number of links) before the content is very bad for SEO. Some will place the menu below the content and use absolute positioning to put the menu where it currently is now. It's a bit ridiculous in doing things backwards and wondering if search engines really don't understand. So the question is twofold: (1) Are the links better in a bottom loading sidemenu where they are now? (2) Given the number of links (about 80 in total with all categories and subcategories), is it bad to have the sidemenu show the subcategories which, in this instance, are somewhat important? Should I just go for the drilldown, e.g. show only categories and then show subcategories after? Truth is that users probably would prefer the dropdown with all the categories and second level subcategories, despite the link number and placement.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | attorney1 -
Seo Hosting
Can anyone suggest me some seo hosting providers?But in better price like hostgator?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1