Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
White Text / Black Background & SEO Impact
-
Does anyone know of any testing / studies with evidence that Google prefers dark text on a light background vs. light text on a dark background?
I have a website that currently has light text on a black background, and really like the way it looks, but am concerned that the style may be hurting SEO.
Moreover, redesigning something inverse with the same quality would be a large project and fairly costly, so I'd like to make sure the benefit will really be worth the cost before moving forward.
-
There is no harm that it can do to your SEO but, in my opinion, dark text on light background is just easier on the eye. What is your bounce rate like? If it's quite high (50%+) then it may be worth looking at.
-
I don't think this will have any effect at all in terms of how the search engines view your site. However, something to consider is that if your visitors are turned off by it and your time on site is less or your pages have a high bounce rate, this may factor into your rankings.
I have heard that some splitting done in regards to white text on a black background revealed lower conversion rates and higher bounce rates.
Just something to consider.
-
No evidence on this.
As long as the text and background isn't the same color you are safe. Also, the more contrast the better for usability sake.
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
-
Mergers & Acquisitions - Website Transition Good practice
Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone has come across good practice for maintaining websites after a merger or acquisition where there needs to be an association between two websites of the two companies involved. For an acquisition, I'm considering moving the acquired company to a sub domain of the parent company e.g. aquiredcompany.parentcompany.com. On both websites there wmay be a prominant popup so visitors can switch between the websites if they have visited the incorrect one. One worry I have is the acquired company has some good rankings, which I want to keep. I will of course manage the process through 301 redirects. But I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this approach or can suggest any better solutions. Thanks in advance, Stuart
Web Design | | Stuart260 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Confluence and SEO
I think this is a difficult question so apologies in advance and any help would be appreciated! We currently have a large amount of support center content sitting on our main pages which we don’t think is very effective (mainly basic how to guides). We think it is difficult for visitors to understand and the UI is very poor. In order to solve this we’re currently moving this content onto a subdomain using Confluence, a wiki based team collaboration tool (from a company called Atlassian). What we’re planning on doing is very much like what Atlassian themselves have done on this page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ALLDOC/Atlassian+Documentation What are the SEO issues / dangers that I need to consider before moving this content? I’m assuming that as this content will still be on the same domain then we can minimise link equity / authority loss by setting up re-directs to the new content. Also, has anyone had any experience of using Confluence and whether individual pages can be optimised for SEO? I notice that there are lots of add-ins that can be used, one of which is an SEO add-on which allows you to customise things like meta description tags.
Web Design | | RG_SEO0 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
SEO Issues From Image Hotlinking?
I have a client who is hotlinking their images from one of their domains. I'm assuming the images were originally stored on the first domain (let's call it SiteA.com) and when they were putting together SiteB.com, they decided to just link to the images directly on SiteA.com instead of moving the images to Site B. Essentially hotlinking. Site A is not using the images in any way and in essence is just a gateway for their other sites and in this case a storage for their images. It doesn't use those images at all, so it really doesn't get any benefits of the images being referenced since I read that Google sometimes counts that hotlinking as a "vote" for the original image. But again, since ite A doesn't use the images that are being hotlinked at all, there's no benefit for Site A. My concern is that it's affecting their SEO for Site B because it makes it look like Site B is simply scraping data by hotlinking those images from Site A. Their programmer suggested creating a virtual directory so that it "looked" like it was coming from Site B. My guess is that Google can see this, so then not only will it look like Site B is scaping/hotlinking images, but also trying to hide it which may send up red flags to Google. My suggesstion to them was to just upload the images correctly into their own images directory on Site B. They own the images, so there's not any copyright issue, but that if they want proper SEO credit for that content, it all needs to be housed on the correct server and not hotlinked. Am I correct in this or will the virtual directory serve just as well?
Web Design | | GeorgiaSEOServices1 -
Pages vs. Posts for SEO
Hi, I would like your thoughts about pages vs. posts for SEO. I understand the difference in terms of WP structure and have read the SEOmoz blog post about setting up your site for SEO success (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). However, if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword, it seems that either one could work, from an on-page SEO perspective, as far as title tag, URL, meta description, etc. So how do you decide whether to set up a page vs. a post? What are the pros and cons, from an SEO perspective, about using one vs. the other? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Web Design | | csmm0 -
Javascript, PhP and SEO Impact?
What are the Pro's and Con's of using Java Script and PHP in a site when factoring in SEO?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
How do search engines interpret <hgroup>...</hgroup> tags?
Hi there. I'm building an HTML 5 site and through research of new HTML 5 elements I've seen little conclusive information about the interpretation of the new <hgroup>tag, in terms of SEO application and interpretation. In particular does Google interpret the nested heading tags as individual elements or does it combine them into one entity? For example, say I have: <hgroup> # Article Heading ## Article Sub-heading </hgroup> How is this interpreted by Google and what would be some good SEO best practices regarding the <hgroup>tag in HTML5: Is it interpretted as a single tag (" Article Heading: Article Sub-heading ") or two separate heading tags (one and one )? Also, how much does the ordering of the tags matter (say for example I wanted something like the following for visual purposes? <hgroup> ## Article Sub-heading # Article Heading </hgroup> One last thing: is it safe to assume that it is indeed OK to have multiple tags on a single page (as referenced by Matt Cutts a while back in a Webmaster Video)? Thanks! </hgroup> </hgroup>
Web Design | | LMDNYC2