Login to see more (some text hidden by CSS height and jquery) will it ruin SEO?
-
Hey SEO masters!
I have a website that is smashing it for SEO in Australia. In an effort to increase a user base I want to make it so only logged in users can see all the content.
So today, I launched a new feature hiding content using CSS 'height:' property. The content is obviously still there and if you were a developer you could easily 'inspect element' and remove that CSS style to see everything... There are a few other tweaks i made for logged out users, but that only affects some json.
Question: will this affect my SEO rankings?
Here is a direct example: https://www.fishingspots.com.au/s/perth if you sign up, there is about 1400words of content.
-
Hey james, thanks mate. I'm thinking of other ways to let organic traffic flow... Since the website is kind of SaaS, but more like content as a service haha.
The plan is:
- User is on the website for 1min 30secs or clicks 3 map markers or visits 3+ pages
- Popup will appear asking for a signup + payment
- If no signup: Cookie will be set for 6 months, if a users returns and cookie is detected (php) they will be redirected to sign up page
- Otherwise signup occured
(I know, web developers could inspect element and hide this stuff).
Do you think google bot be presented with this sign up stuff? And does google bot not set cookies? Will google bot be able to continue to index the site...
BTW, I hid content with css, jquery for 1 week, didn't have much of an affect at all, slight decrease in search visibility, but I was scared to leave it for too long, i managed 340 sign ups though.
-
It may be worth testing on a single page first to see how rankings are affected for your specific site and use case.
It is my understanding that any content that requires user interaction and is not visible to the user when the page loads; will be treated as though it doesn't exist for ranking purposes.
-
Thanks for the reply!
I'm well aware of the ebook tactics... it doesn't really apply here. Not sure if you looked at the site. Yes I am list building.. there is no PDF or ebook i can offer users, this website is the value adder, it is the helpful content. It has traction, 30,000+ visitors monthly and rising.
I give away details for a few fishing spots free, but the rest is sign up required. so far 17.38% conversion rate so far.
-
Thanks James, I'm testing it for a week to see how it goes. It definitely increases users...
What better ways are there to encourage / enforce user signups? Perhaps a cookie tracker of some sort? After 1000+ hours of work I consider a signup to access the content a fair trade
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
-
Migrating login page from website: SEO impact
Our current login page looks like www.website.com/log-in/. We are planning to migrate it to a sub directory login.website.com. For years, our login page is the top landing with highest visits after homepage. If we migrate this now, are we going to loose traffic and drop in rankings? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
May I know what's the "CSS Class" here?
ul.nav a#homelink { text-indent: -9999px; background: url('http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/MyProduct/wp-content/themes/MyProduct/images/home-icon.png') no-repeat center 6px; padding: 0px; } ul.nav a#homelink span { display: block; padding: 5px 9px 8px 5px; width: 16px; } I'm having problems in adding back the "house" icon instead of a "Home" text in my menu. I don't what "CSS class" should I use to be added in the Home menu button (Appearance>Menu). I'm currently using a "MyProducts" Wordpress theme by ElegantThemes. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20131 -
Website Redesign - Will it hurt SERP?
Hi - I am planning to redesign my blog and I was wondering if this will affect my rankings? The new website template (custom designed) is much more user and seo friendly. The content, url structure, internal linking structure, meta tags, and site structure will remain exactly the same, but the visual design will be different (new sidebar widgets, and slightly different layout on inner pages). The current website is ranking very well (mostly top 5), has a healthy backlink profile, strong social media presence, and great traffic. I have heard that switching to a new template will dramatically hurt the rankings. Is this true? Are there any exceptions? Any ways I can prevent the rankings from dropping? Would really appreciate your input. Thanks in advance. Howard
Web Design | | howardd0 -
Drupal SEO - Concerns about cloaking
It appears that core Drupal includes a CSS style that automatically generates an tag for any* or > ## Main menu This uses the CSS to create a 1px1px header with that text that is absolutely positioned in the top left hand corner. Essentially, hidden and unreadable to humans and presumably also useless to even screen readers. There is some discussion of the reasoning for including this functionality as standard here: [http://drupal.org/node/1392510](http://drupal.org/node/1392510 "http://drupal.org/node/1392510") I'm not convinced of its use/validity/helpfulness from an SEO perspective so there's a few questions that arise out of this. 1. Is there a valid non-SEO reason for leaving this as the default rather than giving ourselves full control over our ## tags? 2. Could this be seen as cloaking by creating hidden/invisible elements that are used by the search engines as ranking factors? Update: http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/03/google-invisible-text-hidden-links/ Google's latest patent appears to deal with this topic. The patent document even makes explicit reference to the practice of hiding text in ## tags that are invisible to users and are not proper headings. Anyone have any thoughts on what SEOs using Drupal should be doing about this?
Web Design | | Tinhat1 -
Will launching this site get my E-commerce site penalized?
Hello.. I am wondering if you guys think launching a site like this is a good or a bad idea. All of the links on it go directly to the exact corresponding page on the ecommerce site. Do you think Google will penalize my site for launching sites (i have many other domains that i will be setting up similar to this) like this? Thanks...
Web Design | | Prime850 -
SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
If you could build your website from scratch and have your developers do anything you want (within reason), what list of SEO requirements would you send them? Does anyone know of any good articles on the perfect SEO wish list? Happy Holidays!
Web Design | | MirandaP1 -
What is the best SEO friendly CMS platform?
Would like to build some content sites and would appreciate some guidance on what you believe to be the most SEO friendly CMS platform. I'm also hoping to find something that doesn't require much HTML and is pretty easy to jump into.
Web Design | | EdStaton0