Is moving text out of the main body field a bad idea for SEO?

[nathangdavidson]

Hi,

I manage this WordPress website http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk

I've been looking for ways to improve the product template and have come up with the following http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk/product/the-alhambra-fireplace/ - you can see how this compares to the old template http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk/product/the-burlington-fireplace/

Basically I've moved the description copy for the product from the main body to an alternative field and disabled the reviews tab below the product images to give a more compact feel and better use of the space available in my humble opinion!

The client approves too. However I was just about the change all the other products to match this one - but suddenly thought is is wise to move all text out of the main body just to improve the look? I wondered what impact this might have on search.

Any pointers would be welcomed.

One course of action might be to find a new theme that's just a little more accommodating! Or to develop this theme further to ensure the main body copy is displayed where I want it to be?

Regards to the Moz community - thanks for reading.

Nathan

[nathangdavidson]

Thanks for clearing that up and for your swift response!

Regards,

Nathan

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Nathan

The content is still on the page and readable by search engines. Therefore, your move is totally fine from an SEO standpoint.

Sorry I wasn't clear in my answer!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[nathangdavidson]

Thanks very much for your thoughts Patrick.

I completely agree, I feel sure the new template is better for UX and will hopefully improve conversions. It seems crazy that the main body copy should appear on this theme below the fold, not to the right of the product images.

I think my concern is still that having absolutely no copy in the main body area of the WordPress dashboard could potentially be bad for SEO. I have had to move the text to a field called 'Product Short Description' for it to appear to the right http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk/product/the-alhambra-fireplace/.

If anyone can confirm this one way or the other I'd be very grateful.

Regards,

Nathan

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

From the SEO perspective, I like the new way - especially since there was chatter that Google would discount content that's tabbed or expandable. Now, I have heard (and seen) people with this type of content not seeing any issues or fluctuations with rankings at all, so, it's really upto you on that front - just track your performance. It's just something to consider.

Now, more importantly, from a user standpoint, this is much better because I get the description ABOVE the fold and in an area of the page that historically provides a description. I would be interested to hear if your moving content had any effect on conversion rates - I would image it would.

Next time, I would look into A/B testing any changes on your site to see if you are making the right move. While my gut tells me that your moving the content to it's new position will greatly benefit you from a conversion rate perspective, other changes may call for testing and research.

Hope this helps! Good luck!