Hiding body copy with a 'read more' button
-
Hi
Whats the consequences of hiding half of the lovingly crafted body copy/written content (good quality modern version of what we used to call seo text) i have written for a clients main site sections and then having a 'read more' button to reveal ?
I have written 500+ words for each page but client wants to reduce word count displayed since thinks looks too 'wordy'!
I know that this is possible and used to be fine if done in a manner that was still crawlable, is this still the case ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dana
i did tell the devs to do as you recommended (CSS divs etc) but they just replied saying they did it through javascript instead, but should be ok since on page load the text is defaulting to show. Do you think that would be ok or inadvisable to use java at all as i have also heard elsewhere ? (there has been a drop in rankings since they did this so i'm thinking not ?
All Best
Dan
-
really !? i see it as other way round. SEO text short an kw stuffed and currently long 3-400+ highly descriptive and good quality content copy that includes kw simply by virtue of the being descriptive and useful
-
Old fashioned SEO text would be loads of copy per page. A short paragraph explaining things for the user should be sufficient in most cases.
-
i thought pages needed loads of good copy 500+ words ideally ? instead of old fashioned seo text
-
Probably won't hurt, but won't help either. Could be seen as spammy if you ever had a manual reviewer from Google go over your site. 500+ words per page is overkill.
-
You are welcome Dan!
-
many thanks Dana
-
Hi Dan,
Yes, if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable
tags it's totally fine. It's understandable why from a design standpoint it might be much more attractive to have a page with less words on it. Justin Taylor (@justingraphitas) actually did a bang-up job in a Mozinar on designing for SEO that discusses this exact topic: http://moz.com/webinars/designing-for-seo
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
Hello, I've heard that the outbound links I provide in my content should have a high degree of relevancy to the topic I'm writing about or they aren't really worth including. Is this true?
Hello, I've heard that relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page of outbound links in my content matters greatly. The outbound links I provide in my content should have a high degree of relevancy to the topic I'm writing about, or they aren't really worth including. Example: Don't just link to the homepage of an organization mentioned in the article, link to a page on their site that is related to the topic you are writing about. Is this true? Would including less relevant links negatively impact SEO in any way?
On-Page Optimization | | DJBKBU0 -
How to view all 'followed internal links' on a page
I am trying to view all the followed internal links on a few pages of my website. The MOZ toolbar just gives me the total number of internal followed links. What is the best way to actually see all the internal links that are followed by the google bot from any particular page? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | rjchugh0 -
Where is the reconsideration button guys?
When I go into webmaster tools there is no button for requesting a review as you mentioned it says “No manual webspam actions found”. Please help what can I do for Google to reconsider my site? Visited this page first: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration then page 1 appeared (see image) then page 2 appeared (see image) Qwmar2p pCmVUev
On-Page Optimization | | lvp11380 -
What's the point of my blog?
My website, www.toplinecomms.com has a reasonably good blog that gets quite good interaction and sharing. I introduced the blog at the start of 2013 because the general sentiment from all the SEO books and articles I had read was that a good blog could be invaluable to a search marketing campaign. The posts on the blog are keyword optimised and they get great shares and social engagement. However, I have noticed that the blog is stealing my services' pages' thunder! There are some keywords that I am keen for our services pages to rank for, but the blog is beating them to it! So my question is: How should I be using my blog to get my services pages to rank higher?
On-Page Optimization | | HeatherBakerTopLine0 -
Where aren't on page reports generated for all of my keywords?
I have 39 targetted keywords, yet only 10 on-page reports are generated. My site has about 100 pages. Why don't I see reports for all of my pages?
On-Page Optimization | | mynton0 -
Read More button
Hey everyone We have a read more button always at the end of the 4th paragraph. We used it so we always have the Photos section within the area of view... http://www.surfcampinportugal.com/ Does this harm our SEO? Thanks in advance...
On-Page Optimization | | Rapturecamps0 -
What's the best strategy for reducing the number of links on a blog post?
I'd like to optimize my blog better for search. The first reccomendation I got from my SEOMoz Pro Campaign Crawl was that I needed to reduce the number of links per page on my site. I have lots of links from navigational items in the sidebar that people do click on. I'd really like to keep some or all of the tags and categories I list. Comments are another issue. Most of our posts get about 10 comments. However, our best posts get 50-100 comments. Those comments create a lot of links. I was planning on attempting to reduce the number of links using javascript but I guess Google understands javascript now. I may still do this b/c our pages are huge and some progressive rendering would likely help the user experience. Can you use javascript (ajax or otherwise) to limit the number of links on your page in a way that helps your SEO efforts? Any specific suggestions for reducing links that come from comments and navigational items? How much will reducing the number of links on a given page help with SEO? Any simple way to estimate or quantify this without diving in? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | TaitLarson0