Content in Tabs
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I speed read an article recently and forgot to save it regarding Contents on a page in tabs.
Is it correct that now Google is rendering the entire page it's better not to have content in tabs hidden by Javascript?
As it stands at the moment, we've got the tabs set-up so that the main part of the page containing the keyword rich text is in a tab and not the first thing presented to the user
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Thanks for your reply
I've been googling exerts of the content in tabs and nothing listed for our site so will try changing some of them not be in tabs and see if that makes a difference
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That video is from 2011 and talks about hiding spammy, hidden text. All it is saying is make it natural.
Anything that isn't done correctly will not be rewarded. That is so important to remember. Keep things natural and don't hide the important stuff. Drop down menus and "read more" links are used on a ton of websites. It isn't something that should be abused, it is a tool to help organize a page and make it look appealing. It isn't supposed to be a way to keyword stuff an area in hopes to rank better.
That is what both this video and this article say. Like any SEO tool, don't abuse it.
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Google does recognize that tabbed content can be hidden and doesn't penalize you for it or count it against you in anyway. The content is in the source code, the content is crawled.
Most every responsive design out there has tabs and clickable, expandable content. The important thing is to make sure the content is unique and informative. It shouldn't be given such a negative connotation just because it is called "hiding". The kind of hidden content that doesn't get indexed is keyword stuffed, duplicate and spammy content. That is what gets penalized, not good content that is merely organized to provide an aesthetically pleasing website.
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I thought Matt Cutts said that Google recognises that tabbed content could be hidden and its not a factor to be hit with any penalty as long as its not stuffed with rubbish. This is going off my memory and could be wrong ;o)
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Have a read of this: Google: Your Content In Tabs & Click To Expand May Not Be Indexed Or Ranked
I'd have a look at the source code and see if the content is readable. Also copy and past snippets of the "hidden" text into Google to see if it is being indexed.
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I have thousands of reviews and product descriptions behind tabs and drop down menus on my site. I have to have them this way because I have 20-30k words on each page. I have to organize it somehow. I use h tags in the tab titles to make sure Google knows that the content is relevant. To this date I have not had an issue with the content being crawled and indexed.
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In addition to what Leonie just said, one technique I first spotted on zappos.com and I often use is to put the excerpt of the content on top of the page with a read more button pointing to an on-page anchor to the full text to the bottom of the page.
It's not something you can always do without impairing UX, and I have no idea if google algo prefer that when compared to hiding the same content behind a js click.
But I also remember Matt Cutts discussing this in a video and say to do not worry too much because they do understand in today ui there's plenty of valuable content show through tabs, carousel and so on.
But you know, seems "don't worry too much" is one of his favourite sentence.
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Hi, I know this video / hangout about there is a question about content after read more button / tab
The advice is, that if content is important don't put it behind tab / read more button. Google can see this content as hidden or less important, and will try to ignore it.
By using the word "try" you can ask yourself, is Google abled to ignore this content.. i don't know.
Anyway if you look at the importance of the content; i'll say always show important content to your clients, do not hide it behind tabs and or read more buttons.
grtz, Leonie
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