Seo and CSS media queries
-
Hello to all participants!
I'm starting on responsive design with css media queries and I was wondering if hidding content can, in this case, can also be bad for seo?
I know that hidding content is bad (eg. display: none;), but is it also like that with responsive design or does Google see it other way?
If I have a news column with title, image and text for 1024px and hide the text and image leaving just the title for 768px, or smaller, will Google consider this black hat and will it be bad for seo?
are there any articles I can read about this subject, and other similar subjects?
sorry for my english
thanks
-
First of all, for the benefit of the discussion it's worth pointing out that the Googlebot will ignore the CSS code and read whatever is in those tags.
Using tags like "display: none" and other similar ones will not by itself result in the Googlebot sounding the alarm. It is sophisticated enough to recognise that many web designs use the tags for a better look at the website and UX experience.
Where it might start getting angry (and you won't like it when it's angry) is when it finds links within the tags - particularly those that point to completely irrelevant webpages and/or spammy ones. If that happens, it's quite a big no-no, as it will think you're trying to hide these links from Google for nefarious reasons. Similarly a whole bunch of content that could be duplicate and/or is being used for keyword stuffing etc would also sound the alarm.
Provided you avoid that, I wouldn't worry about using the tags, as it can be useful for a number of reasons. Worth remembering, however, that the Googlebot will crawl and see whatever is hidden in their anyway.
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
-
SEO Ranking: Can Child Theme Compete with Custom Theme?
Ranking for New York City commercial real estate is extremely competitive. We compete against: www.squarefoot.com, www.42floors.com, www.Loopnet.com, www.wework.com and a dozen other optimized sites. Our site was designed in 2012. We plan on upgrading it. From an SEO perspective, can we compete by purchasing a Wordpress real estate theme and customizing it into a child theme? Our better ranking competitors are using custom themes where the code has been very streamlined to make the sites quick and easy to index by spiders. Would we gain a significant edge by custom coding? This is somewhat technical for a business owner and I am trying to get my head around it. Our existing site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Some of the themes we are considering are: -http://main.wpestatetheme.org/homepage -http://houzez01.favethemes.com/ -http://realhomes.inspirythemes.biz/property/ From an SEO perspective is creating a child theme from the above a good approach? Or will a custom theme give us an advantage. If there is an advantage is that edge so marginal that it is not significant? In terms of coding, is a custom site much more labor, 2x, 3x the time to code? Also is the maintenance of a custom site much more involved? Also, as a related question, my developer since 2012 has created many custom plugins for Wordpress. Is this a no, no? Will avoiding custom plugins add to the development cost? Even if we use a child theme from an existing real estate website, I would hope that the improved user interface will provide a boast in at least conversions if not SEO. Thanks, Alan
Web Design | | Kingalan10 -
Location of body text on page - at top or bottom - does it matter for SEO?
Hi - I'm just looking at the text on a redesigned homepage. They have moved all the text to the very bottom of the page (which is quite common with lots of designers, I notice - I usually battle to move the important text back up to the top). I have always ensured the important text comes at the top, to some extent - does it matter where on the page the text comes, for SEO? Are there any studies you can point me to? Thanks for your help, Luke
Web Design | | McTaggart2 -
SEO Value to Improving HTML Code of Website That Validates According to W3C?
Greetings MOZ Community: My real estate website www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, originally designed in Drupal, was relaunched using Wordpress in 2013. The code for all URLs validates. The relaunch was performed by developers in Argentina. As part of an SEO campaign, I very reputable design/coding company in the has provided new wire frames to correct useability issues holding back conversions. In the course of the design adjustments they inspected the code and have told me that it is inefficient, that a number of shortcuts were taken and that the code does not conform to Wordpress best practices. What concerns me most is their claim that the quality of coding makes it more difficult for Google to index the site and this may be detrimental to ranking. Is it possible for the original developers to clean up this code if the deficiencies are pointed out to them? Or once coding shortcuts are taken are they impossible to fix? Would it make sense for me to request that the new design team put together a list of HTML deficiencies and provide to the original developers and ask them to correct? I am spending tens of thousands of dollars on content optimization, content marketing. It would be absurd if these coding issues would ultimately prevent improvement in ranking and traffic. At the same time, I hate to be a cynic but the domestic design/coding firm, while being very professional, does have an incentive in getting me to ditch the original design so I commit to an costly rebranding. If these issues are really minor maybe it is not worth making the effort to clean up the code (assuming that is even possible) and focus the budget on content marketing. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | Kingalan10 -
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 -
Can anyone recommend a tool that will identify unused and duplicate CSS across an entire site?
Hi all, So far I have found this one: http://unused-css.com/ It looks like it identifies unused, but perhaps not duplicates? It also has a 5,000 page limit and our site is 8,000+ pages....so we really need something that can handle a site larger than their limit. I do have Screaming Frog. Is there a way to use Screaming Frog to locate unused and duplicate CSS? Any recommendations and/or tips would be great. I am also aware of the Firefix extensions, but to my knowledge they will only do one page at a time? Thanks!
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Anyone used bugherd.com for onsite seo purposes?
Just as the title says, has anyone used bugherd.com for SEO purposes? I was thinking it could be used to show client changes that need to be made regarding the website. Example could be if you are looking at a CRO prospective, you may want to change/add some graphics or text to improve conversions. It seems like a nifty tool to show the changes you want made and to keep track of them. It integrates with basecamp also 🙂
Web Design | | KyleChamp0 -
How about some SEO tips for small local businesses
The amount of time I hear people say write good content and people will naturally link to you. I appreciate this must be valid for large websites that a driven by content. However, it doesn't really hold much hope for smaller businesses with just service information etc. I work for a small business that does web design in the UK. However, I'm finding it difficult to do any sort of link building. In my opinion nobody is going to link to any of our content naturally or if it is, its going to be small time. Our rankings have dropped slightly (only to 4th in our local county). I've done the following thinks to try get it back up there but its having little or no results. Adding us to local business directories External Articles on site Cleaned up some duplicate title tags. What link building can I do? Is link building the home page sometimes not always the way to go? What content can I write that google will like? See what I mean? My rankings did climb a little bit but then dropped straight back down to their original places 2 weeks later. Help would be appreciated.
Web Design | | sanchez19600 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0