Opt-in Form as Hidden Text - what do you think?
-
Hi All,
I have at least 2 website that have opt-in form that isn't visible all the time (cookie related). Also, the thank you message will appear (obviously) only after signing in.
Here how it looks like:
Sign up to receive exclusive updates and special offers
Congratulations on joining our email list!
You will be the first to know about exciting news, red carpet updates, special offers, and much more.There seems to be a problem with a signup. Please try again later.
What do you think? It may penalize my website or do you find it legit?
-
Hi Shahar,
Thanks for the question.
As the other guys have said, it's hard to predict how the search engines will react to hidden content. In this case though, I highly doubt that this form would cause a penalty. You're not hiding this content with the intent of manipulation or anything like that and if a Googler were to look at this, they'd see that you're not to hide anything bad.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Hi Sharar,
It is hard to say definitively what the Search Engines will make of this text, as it is consistent between pages, they will likely class it as template content, rather than page content, but it will still be assessed as something.
To be on the safe side, is it possible to have this content only populate the
via javascript? I am assuming the Class or style on thatchanges so it appears, so when doing that, you could put the text in rather than just changing it's visibility?
However, doing this will take those words out of your word count, so I would recommend upping the text content on at least your most important pages, (if not all pages) to compensate for this.
Kind Regards
Jimmy
-
Anybody?
-
Hi Alice,
This form and code are on every single page, including the homepage
Do you still think it's not problematic?
When I check the cached version (text only) I can see it as part of the overall text
-
Hi Sahar,
As far as I know crawler doesn't submit form and crawler wouldn't find the page that comes after submission. No it won't penalize your site.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Hi,
As the hidden text does not contain any of your keywords, I would be surprised if any search engines had a problem with the content in such a markup.
If that content was keyword heavy and hidden from view then you would be likely to incur scrutiny from the search engines.
Kind Regards
Jimmy
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
-
Looking to remove dates from URL permalink structure. What do you think of this idea?
I know most people who remove dates from their URL structure usually do so and then setup a 301 redirect. I believe that's the right way to go about this typically. My biggest fear with doing a global 301 redirect implementation like that across an entire site is that I've seen cases where this has sort of shocked Google and the site took a hit in organic traffic pretty bad. Heres what I'm thinking a safer approach would be and I'd like to hear others thoughts. What if... Changed permalink structure moving forward to remove the date in future posts. All current URLs stay as is with their dates Moving forward we would go back and optimize past posts in waves (including proper 301 redirects and better URL structure). This way we avoid potentially shocking Google with a global change across all URLs. Do you know of a way this is possible with a large Wordpress website? Do you see any conplications that could come about in this process? I'd like to hear any other thoughts about this please. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagJeff0 -
Anchor text optimisation
Hi, I would like to know the best anchor text practices. I think it's same for On-page and Off-page. As per the internet seo buzz, people suggests differently as below. Which actually work out? Exact match with target page title or partial match Will "Read more" and "learn more" are Okay? How much it must be relevant with URL? Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
Large scale change of incoming anchor text/alt tag image links
I provide SEO services in-house and for clients for a ecommerce and web design company. For every client site we create or host we provide a image link on the bottom linking back to our company website. I started researching competitors that offer same services for our industry that have top Google rankings for all the terms we are targeting and i just realized they rank that well because their image/anchor text link they place on client sites is alt tagged for that specific keyword. We have not been optimizing or utilizing this easy keyword backlink method. I am now wanting to go to all of our clients sites and change our backlinks to target the keyword we are optimizing for but my concern is will that number of incoming anchor text/image alt tag links cause us to get penalized from google for either over optimization or them seeing 100's of backlinks keyword specific just change overnight. What is the best way to go about this change in a safe way to avoid or risk penalty from Google? 99% of all of our client backlinks are in the footer so they show up on every single page and they are all images. Would it have a different affect if i add a alt tag to those images so that we get the oncoming link juice of that specific keyword? One of my concerns is over optimization, since some of our clients have 1000's of pages on their website. so that is 1000's of incoming exact match keyword links. I feel like the danger is low for being penalized but i would rather be safe then sorry and get additional feedback. Thanks, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
Anchor Text Usage
Hi, What is the best way to use anchor text during link building after recent updates from Google. I thinking of doing the following: 60% Brand Keyword (my site name)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitss
20% Click here, visit this site etc
20% myurl.com
10% a Mix of both broad & phrase match of my targetted keyword. What do you suggest Does anyone have a working strategy? Will be waiting for your replies...0 -
Anchor text questions - What are your thoughts?
Hi, I want to talk about anchor text and the effect it has on search engines (Good & Bad). Here is a fictitious example we can talk about: www.supercoolrunningsneakers.com Title Tag: Running Sneakers - The Super Trendy Running Trainers Keywords targeted: Running Sneakers, Running Trainers How would you vary your anchor text to target these terms? If you had 50 unique articles to play with how would you vary the anchor text using the articles? Would you push 25 articles at 'Running Sneakers' and the other 25 at 'Running Trainers' or would you link some articles using the domain name anchor text? Q: I'm guessing running 50 articles using anchor text 'Running Sneakers' would benefit the SERP's moe for that term then mixing it up with say 'Running Sneakers', 'Running Trainers' & 'Domain Name Links'. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Does title text of homepage effect ranking of sub pages?
Question is pretty much summed up in the title. I realize that title text on a specific page can effect the ranking of that page. But what I'm getting a feeling of lately is that google uses the title text of your homepage to effect the ranking of the site on a whole. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg1 -
Sign up form
Hi, My company sells a SAAS B-to-B product. The measure of success for most of our marketing channels is how many people sign up for a free 30-day trial of our product. We are about to launch new learning centers without about 20 new pieces of content. The primary goal of this new content is to attract more organic search volume, which in turn should give us more sign ups. My CEO would like me to put our sign up form directly on all these pages to encourage sign ups. If we put our sign up form directly on each of these pages, will search engines ding us? Does Google etc. see form fields and view that as bad? Our other option is, instead of including the form directly on the pages, to include an 'ad' space on the pages with a link that takes people to our actually sign up page that includes the form. The other part of my question is around the placement of the form or ad unit. Will any SEO issues be mitigated by ensuring we have real content displayed in the code before the form? Visually, in this case, it would be on the right side instead of the left. In general, can you comment on the importance placement for a form or ad unit compared to the meaty part of the content? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0
