Content Stacking - CSS positioning
-
I was curious to know what everyone thinks about CSS positioning so that the spiders will read a optimal bulk of content first - before it reads the others. Say I have some Tab's set up for navigational purposes, where the content in the last tab is actually what I want the bots to see first. What would be the best practices for accomplishing something like this?
-
I really see no problem with this within reason. Your best bet is to start by separating layout code into external CSS and Javascript files, so the majority of the code on your page is just simple HTML elements and text. This is 90% of the battle. Reorganizing the content so that your unique, valuable textual content occurs towards the top of the code is the remaining 10%. However, there haven't been any formal studies to prove that this matters much at all. My guess is that unless this is a change you are making on hundreds if not thousands of pages, you will probably see almost no improvement.
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
-
Hiding content until user scrolls - Will Google penalize me?
I've used: "opacity:0;" to hide sections of my content, which are triggered to show (using Javascript) once the user scrolls over these sections. I remember reading a while back that Google essentially ignores content which is hidden from your page (it mentioned they don't index it, so it's close to impossible to rank for it). Is this still the case? Thanks, Sam
Web Design | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Curious why site isn't ranking, rather seems like being penalized for duplicate content but no issues via Google Webmaster...
So we have a site ThePowerBoard.com and it has some pretty impressive links pointing back to it. It is obviously optimized for the keyword "Powerboard", but in no way is it even in the top 10 pages of Google ranking. If you site:thepowerboard.com the site, and/or Google just the URL thepowerboard.com you will see that it populates in the search results. However if you quote search just the title of the home page, you will see oddly that the domain doesn't show up rather at the bottom of the results you will see where Google places "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 7 already displayed". If you click on the link below that, then the site shows up toward the bottom of those results. Is this the case of duplicate content? Also from the developer that built the site said the following: "The domain name is www.thepowerboard.com and it is on a shared server in a folder named thehoverboard.com. This has caused issues trying to ssh into the server which forces us to ssh into it via it’s ip address rather than by domain name. So I think it may also be causing your search bot indexing problem. Again, I am only speculating at this point. The folder name difference is the only thing different between this site and any other site that we have set up." (Would this be the culprit? Looking for some expert advice as it makes no sense to us why this domain isn't ranking?
Web Design | | izepper0 -
Duplicate Content Home Page http Status Code Query
Hi All, We have just redone a site wide url migration (from old url structure to new url structure) and set up our 301's etc but have this one issue whereby I don't know if' it's a problem of not. We have 1 url - www.Domain.co.uk**/** which has been set up to 301 redirect back to www.domain.co.uk However, when I check the server response code, it comes back as 200. So although it appears to visually 301 redirect if I put the url in the tool bar, the status code says different. Could this be seen as a potential duplicate home page potentially and if so , any idea how I could get around it if we can't solve the root cause of it. This is on a cake php framework, thanks PEte
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
Above the Fold Content - Use of large images
Hi All, Our designers have come to the SEO team to ask if have a large image across the top of the page taking up a large majority of the above the fold real estate will impact our SEO. Our initial thoughts are no as long as we have an optimised H1 visibal to the user landing there which informs them what the page is about. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Web Design | | J_Sinclair1 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
How to change the entire contents and design in my site without getting troubles with google?
Hello everyone This is my first post over here. In the next few weeks we going to change the entire content and design in our site. The site has 240 pages with poor contents and design. Except 301 redirects for all the old url’s I wanted to consult with you what is the right way to do it without harm my organic traffic that come from google? How google refers to this kind of changes? Which steps should I need to take to do it properly? Hope to get your help in the issue. Tahnks in advance.
Web Design | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Will changing our URL's to MVC friendly URL's have a positive or negative affect on our rankings and link juice?
We've recently changed our site over to a new hosting system, we've got similar pages and are now looking at changing the URL's to ensure we do not loose our link juice from our previous site. My question is regarding the URL's, is it worth us changing our URL's to MVC friendly URL have a good or bad affect on our rankings and or link juice? Thanks
Web Design | | SimonDixon0 -
Duplicate Content Problem on Our Site?
Hi, Having read the SEOMOZ guide and already worried about this previously, I have decided to look further into this. Our site is 4-5 years old, poorly built by a rouge firm so we have to stick with what we have for now. Were I think we might be getting punished is duplicate content across various pages. We have a Brands page, link at top of page. Here we are meant to enter each brand we stock and a little write up on that brands. What we then put in these write ups is used on each brands item page when we click a brand name on the left nav bar. Or when we click a Product Type (eg. Footwear) then click on a brand filter on the left. So this in theory is duplicate content. The SEO title and Meta Description for each brand is then used on the Brands Page and also on each page with the Brands Product on. As we have entered this brand info, you will notice that the page www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/armani-jeans/ has the same brand description in the scroll box at the top as the page www.designerboutique-online.com/shirts/armani-jeans/ and all the other product type pages. The same SEO title and same Meta descriptions. Only the products change from each one. This then applies to each brand we have (at least 15) across about 8 pages. All with different URLs but the same text. Not sure how a 301 or rel: canonical would work for this, as each URL needs to point at specific pages (eg. shirts, shorts etc...). Some brands such as Creative Recreation and Cruyff only sell footwear, so technically I think??? We could 301 to the Footwear/ URL rather than having both all-clothing and footwear file paths? This surely must be down to the bad design? Could we be losing valulable rank and juice because of this issue? And how would I go about fixing it? I want a new site, but funds are tight. But if this issue is so big that only a new site would fix it, then maybe the money would need to come forward. What do people make of this? Cheers Will
Web Design | | YNWA0