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.
Does the use of sliders for text-on-page, effects SEO in any way?
-
The concept of using text sliders in an e-commerce site as a solution to placing SEO text above or in between product and high on ages, seems too good to be true.... or is it?
How would a text slider for FAQ or other on-page text done with sliding paragraphs (similar but not this specific code- http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2010/08/dynamic-faq-jquery-yql-google-docs/faq.html) might effect text-on-page SEO. Does Google consider it hidden text?
Would there be any other concerns or best practices with this design concept?
-
Fredrik,
This is very helpful and gives me a clearer understanding as to how to make this work properly. The example was just that, and meant to explain basic functionality. We'll make sure we end up using an index-able HTML based version.
Much thanks for your advise.
ron
-
Hi Ron
As Paul stated there are many ways of doing sliders. Most of the new sliders out there do work with JavaScript but often used already loaded dom elements for the slides. That means that the actual content is in the HTML and the JavaScript is used to animate or style them. This content would then be indexed just as a normal div would.
You can also use http://www.seobrowser.com/, (simple option is free) to see the page as Google would see it. If you then can read your content it should be possible to index it.
One thing to think of is that sliders, as the name implies, often contains more than one slide. If the slider has a heading in it it might be a good thing to make the first heading H1 and secondary sliders H2. This way you can place your most important content in the first slide.
Not sure if you use Jquery but if you do http://jquerytools.org/ offer great power and flexibility. Please note that I am NOT connected to them or work for them. We have just used their scripts on variious of our projects.
I had a quick look at your example and unfortunetely that would have a very hard time getting indexed since content is in the javascript. I would consider putting all content in the HTML and then just hide and show sections using Jquery instead.
Have a great day and good luck
Fredrik
-
Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for the detailed answer. deep down i worried this might be the case.
The truth is that the text in question is pretty much for SEO reasons only. Do you know f a better way, or another kind of script that would serve to have the text indexed?
Ron
-
The answer is that it actually depends very much on exactly what kind of coding is used to accomplish the effect, Ron.
In most cases, this kind of slider effect is accomplished using some variation of JavaScript. While Google has said it is "trying" to have it's crawlers recognize text from scripts, it almost never works that way.
So it won't be flagged as "hidden" text, because in fact Google won't even consider it to exist on the page.
An easy way to test is to view the source for the page in question - you'll see that none of the words of text actually exist on the page in any form, even in the code.
For the ultimate example of this - go into Google Webmaster Tools and use the Fetch as Googlebot tool to fetch the page. Then you'll see exactly the content that googlebot will see. It won't see the text, therefor it can't index and rank it. Ergo no SEO benefit at all.
Where you could get into trouble is if you did have text on the page designed to make googlebot think the page is about one thing, while using this kind of scripted text to try to show the visitor something completely different and unrelated. Google could then suspect you of cloaking and penalize accordingly. (Cloaking is when you intentionally show googlebot one thing and the user something different for nefarious purposes)
But if you're adding the text as a usability enhancement for your visitors in a way that googlebot doesn't happen to understand, you won't get any SEO benefit from it, but you also shouldn't be penalized for it.
Paul
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
-
Is 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
Best way to link to multiple location pages
I am a Magician and have multiple location pages for each county I cover. I currently have them linked off the menu under locations/ <county>and also in the footer</county> However I have heard that a link from the page is much stronger, so I am experimenting with removing the Menu & Footer link and just linking to these pages from within the content. It's not really a navigation item and most people come in through search to the right page. Am I diluting the link by having it in the Menu/Page and Footer? I read a long time ago that Google only considers the first link to a page and ignores the rest - is that the case? Thanks Roger https://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | Rogerperk0 -
What's the best way to test Angular JS heavy page for SEO?
Hi Moz community, Our tech team has recently decided to try switching our product pages to be JavaScript dependent, this includes links, product descriptions and things like breadcrumbs in JS. Given my concerns, they will create a proof of concept with a few product pages in a QA environment so I can test the SEO implications of these changes. They are planning to use Angular 5 client side rendering without any prerendering. I suggested universal but they said the lift was too great, so we're testing to see if this works. I've read a lot of the articles in this guide to all things SEO and JS and am fairly confident in understanding when a site uses JS and how to troubleshoot to make sure everything is getting crawled and indexed. https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/javascript-seo-resources/ However, I am not sure I'll be able to test the QA pages since they aren't indexable and lives behind a login. I will be able to crawl the page using Screaming Frog but that's generally regarded as what a crawler should be able to crawl and not really what Googlebot will actually be able to crawl and index. Any thoughts on this, is this concern valid? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
Hello. I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do? What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0 -
Text in div
When you use text in a div like this: <div id="container"> <h1 id="doc-header">Your Business in your Location - Your Services</h1> <p>Top industries are getting hit.p> <div id="branding"> <a href="#"> <img id="logo" src="images/logo.png" alt="Your Site" /> </a> </div> Are there SEO consequences when you put text in divs?
Technical SEO | | PlusPort0