Which Hat of SEO (Black/White) Goes with this Green Lace Dress?
-
Doing some research (honestly) I came across this page: http://www.modcloth.com/th/green-lace-dress
That page ranks very well for the phrase "green lace dress" - #2 in Google for me. I'm sure there's a good amount of links coming into it, but on the surface there's only 1 mention of green on the page and 2 mentions of lace.
Looking at the code, you can see ModCloth is using the Quick View links below the products to display a more detailed description of the product - wherein lies many more instances of green and lace.
So I ask: Which color of SEO hat goes with this green lace dress - Black or White? Is it good SEO to only show the product descriptions when the user initiates the Quick View? Or is it shady SEO to hide so much text from the immediate view of the user? Please select one and explain why.
-
Thanks for the ideas and input, Christina!
*Disclaimer: SEOmoz discussions are not responsible for a drop in productivity due to commenters finding the examples used to be awesome.
-
Darn you, Nate, I almost wasted the rest of my afternoon poking around ModCloth!
They are just using the main description and cutting it off, which I think is a missed opportunity. I'd do a one to two-line intro to the piece, the same way you would preface a link to an article on Twitter. I'd either take a line or two from the original description and stop there, or draft up one based on the most salient features of the item.
-
Thanks for the response, Tom! Good point about the similarity to FAQ pages.
Some retailers don't take the time to write their own product descriptions. What would you propose be different about the content on a product's page vs. that product's preview on a category page?
-
Hah! Touché Nate, lol - You are most welcome
-
Ha! Duly noted with your last name being Tan!
Those were pretty much my initial thoughts as well, just wanted to get confirmation of my thought process.
I guess I'd have to see an example of a "ridiculously spammy" Quick View link to fully understand your point on that, but the end remains the same: Do what's best for the user and all is well.
Thanks for the reply!
-
Can't see anything wrong with this at all.
It's a page designed with the user at heart. The first view keeps this concise and lets the user select the style they want, after which they can click for more information if necessary, rather than having an information overload.
Just because text is being hidden to begin with doesn't make it a bad thing. I find this very similar to the FAQ pages that you get with the sort of accordion style (click the + sign, expand for more information). I think it works well for a product page and I'm surprised it hasn't been done more.
Completely "white-hat" in my view - the only grey area would be if those descriptions are being lifted from the original page, might be a weeny bit of duplicate content in that case.
-
First let me say that I thought it was kind of funny that you posted a question about black hat/white hat regarding the color green and your last name is "White."
I don't think there's anything wrong at all by putting a more complete description in a product "Quick View...." as long as users seem to be engaged with the page. From that standpoint, my take on it is that it's totally white hat. Now, could that "Quick View" text be written in a way that's ridiculously spammy? Sure. But still, in my view it's not really "black hat" for this reason: The page wasn't constructed to deliberately hide anything from the end user. It was constructed to perhaps be more aesthetically pleasing by using the "Quick View" to make the text available to visitors without having to clog up the page with loads and loads of text visually. If the "Quick View" text was completely invisible to end users, and only visible to a bot....then I believe you'd have a black hat scenario.
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
-
How to split organic traffic for A/B testing
This might be a silly questions as I may be missing something completely obvious here, but we are completely new to A/B testing. Our site doesn't receive a phenomenal amount of traffic although we are looking to set up some A/B testing for our popular products. Is there a way to split organic traffic for a specific product page. I'm aware that we need to experiment which one performs better in Analytics but I'm unsure how to redirect 50% of the organic traffic.
Web Design | | Jseddon920 -
Responsive design to serve different page for IE8 - SEO Implications?
A client is planning on developing a responsive designed website which redirects visitors using IE8 to a static webpage that encourages users to visit in another browser. What are the SEO implications of a server redirect just for IE8 visitors? Possible solutions: would containing a link on the static page to "continue browsing" and give the visitor access to the entire site in IE8 work well? Or should a CSS overlay message appear to IE8 visitors, no redirect, that encourages them to visit in another browser? Or serving a separate stylesheet for IE8 visitors, and not giving a responsive experience be optimal? Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated. Cheers, Alex
Web Design | | Alex.Weintraub0 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Hello Again Moz community, This is my last Q of the day: I have a LOT of outbound links on the home page of www.web3.ca Some are to clients projects, most are to other pages on the website. Can reducing this to the core pages have a positive impact on SEO? Thanks, Anton
Web Design | | Web3Marketing870 -
Time On Site and SEO?
Does time on site impact rankings? If a person visits your site from the serps or directly visits it by typing in your name in the search field and then leaves within a minute, will that impact your serps? What is the best way to increase time on site?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
RSS Submissions Positive/Negative/Neutral Impact...
We are looking to push our site content and blog content out to the masses... There are several sites and services that accept RSS feeds or submit RSS feeds to 50+ RSS sites. Have you seen an positive or negative impact of submitting feeds to these RSS directories? I am primarily looking at this for getting or content out and builing inbound links... Any thoughts or feedback would be appreciated... C
Web Design | | hireawizseo0 -
What do web designers consider to be SEO
I'm putting together an article about Web Designers and SEO. The basic crux is that most designers will at most (if you are lucky) add in title tags, maybe pretty URL's and HTML links and call it SEO friendly. (lot's who don't probably but also lot's who are even worse) Of course I want it to be a bit controversial so please feel free to let rip. My argument is clients who have previously had site's that have had "SEO on them", know think that all SEO is a waste of time as their previous experience didn't produce the traffic and sales they were expecting. I don't know many designers who independently consider a site marketing strategy and how a site is going to generate links in the long term. I'm sure most of us have read this post on SEO responsiblities but becasue the first port of call for most business owners are the web designers, our offering is undermined by their misunderstandings and in some cases mis-sellings. So under the working title, "Why Web Designers Are Bad For SEO", any care to share some imput.
Web Design | | FDC1 -
Looking for an open source or wordpress designer that knows seo best practices
I have almost lost my patience in trying to find a web developer for our project. I have searched high and low from freelancers to us based firms. All I can find; freelancers that can't get the job done, but promise they can and us based firms that are currently getting away with murder charging through the nose on work that is not acceptable to say the least. US based Firms 1. Seem to give you as little work as possible to increase their margin. I get it we all need to make money. 2. Everyone knows how to do everything until you start telling them that you have a little education in the industry and will be testing their work. All of the sudden they no longer talk to you. 3. Got a few recommendations and they are all subpar performers. After asking them why their builds load so slow or have so many errors they have excuses that point to the customer Freelancers over seas. 1. I am not sure where to start with this. I have searched high and low in freelancer for someone that I can trust to build a site. Of course there is a ton of junk to look through. After countless hours of narrowing down the individuals I am thinking of giving a shot I find that they are not capable of the job. All I want is a new website from a firm that is honest and knows what they are doing. That is educated in seo best practices. That can build a quality website and actually has references of sites they built that are still up and running and test out alright. It is pretty bad when web development companies miss simple items like h tags. Really? Does anyone know of someone that knows what they are doing? That can work with someone that knows how to run a dvd player. Just disappointing to see all these web companies and freelancers that get away with murder. Who earns their keep in this industry?!?!?!?
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0 -
SEO ethical practice in question
A family friend asked me to take a look at her website. www.designsbymaida.com First thing i noticed is what seemed a 301 redirect or a forward to http://funktionaldesignstudios.com/dbm-old/ So her site is hosted with what it looks like, in his site(funktonaldesigns). What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO. My thought is that he is boosting his domain name. He is getting the link juice. Thanks for the insight and help.
Web Design | | QualityHosting1