Is Googlebot seeing text in my 'Read More' bar and could they even be penalising me for it?
-
Hi guys.
Our web developers have put a read more bar that contains the on page SEO text for our webpage. By default, the read more bar is not expanded and you cannot see the text within. If you click 'Read More', the box expands and the text is shown on the page.
I was wondering if googlebot is seeing this text at all - it's really important that it does because it contains all the on-page SEO text. I also wondered if this type of approach is still considered 'white hat'? If it's not, could google be penalising us for it?
Thanks,
-
Thanks for your input Frederik.
I've used the website you mention and it look absolutely fine.
-
Thanks for the reply. It's not just keyword spam but correctly written content so I think it's all ok.
-
Good answer David.
-
Hi Carl
To answer your question I would need to have a look at the site. If the content hidden behind the read more button is in the HTML and then hidden until Read more is clicked its probably gonna get indexed. To be sure you can hide it in the CSS instead of in the HTML. If the text is added from inside the javascript and injected into the DOM its probably not going to get indexed.
You can also use this free tool to see the page as Google sees it:
http://www.seobrowser.com/ (Use the simple version its free)
Your second questions concerning if you would be penalised for it depends on just what is behind that Read more button? If its information that is valid to the user and a natural part of the site you should have no problem.
Hope this helps you on the way'
Have a great day
Fredrik
-
1. Can googlebot see the text?
Login in to Google Webmaster Tools, go to Health > Fetch as Google This will show you exactly what they can see.
2. Could you be penalised for it?
If it's just keyword spam, yes. Make sure the content isn't there just for bots, but is useful for visitors and you should be fine,
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
-
How to replace the keywords of our Google Site https://www.opcfitness.com/ 's TITLE
How to replace the keywords of our Google Site https://www.opcfitness.com/ 's TITLE Our new google site https://www.opcfitness.com/ page https://www.opcfitness.com/commercial-fitness title: Gym Equipment for Sale - Buy Commercial Fitness The site name is Gym Equipment for Sale. But we need the title like this Buy Commercial Fitness - Gym Equipment for Sale How to fix it?
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
Site is too slow? Seeing a new code.
Site is too slow. I am seeing this new code more than 1000 times in my home page- What should I do now? My site- http://a1stlucie.com/
On-Page Optimization | | Beachflower0 -
Internal link text
Hi With internal links, should I make sure to always use the same anchor text im trying to rank the page for? For example im having a tidy up and have realised im linking to the same page in multiple blog posts using different anchor text. Whats the rule of thumb here? Thanks Chris
On-Page Optimization | | mrcsleonard1 -
Can soft 404's hurt my rankings?
This post mainly pertains to soft 404's but I recently dropped a few ranks in my main keyword which I have maintained prior to this my better rank for well over 2 years. I participate in NO BLACKHAT and obtain links naturally. I want to describe a few issues that happened prior to my ranking dropping and see what you guys think. I started to receive about a week prior to my ranks dropping DNS issues with GWT. It was weird because when I would use Goole Fetch on those pages they would return just fine so I was not sure what was happening there. I use Google page speed server which did in fact decrease my load time (YEAH!!) so that was cool. About 1 week prior to my rankings dropping I enabled godaddy's Website Accelerator as well thinking that could help even more. Because of this I thought maybe this had something to do with my DNS issues with Google so I decided to turn off my website accelerator with Godaddy and just leave my Google pagespeed service on. I figure I don't need 2 of them anyways IMO. Also at the same time I started to receive a ton (31,000+) html errors with duplicate metadescriptions and titles. I discovered I had an error with my code which was displaying 2 different sets of descriptions and titles for each of these pages. I since then have fixed the issue and waiting for Google to index those pages. Here is were I think I might have been hurting from the drop in rankings. Some months ago (maybe 2) I decided to redirect my 404's to my homepage. Yes I know this is not good now and I have created a proper 404 page which returns the 404 code. I recently started getting a ton of Soft 404 errors in GWT which is what brought my attention to this issue. My question is, could my action of redirecting my users to my homepage as a 404 which obviously was returning a 200 on a page that did not exist be possibly the culprit to my ranks dropping?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich1 -
Should I buy an established domain that has lost it's high PR due to being offline for several months?
I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months. It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business. Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months. That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)? Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?
On-Page Optimization | | martybuch230 -
Changing Ttile Tags & 301's
I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Has anyone had experience with the Wix platform and it's SEO qualities?
Wix offers an inexpensive, user friendly platform for building websites. Most of the site is flash, but Wix claims to be SEO friendly. I'm all ears for your feedback and experience with Wix.
On-Page Optimization | | ksracer0 -
Lots of links on homepage to internal pages with keyword rich anchor text - problem?
Hi, All! We have a new potential client, that when looking at his site with a tool, we noticed that the previous SEO company they worked with filled the homepage copy with lots of keyword-rich anchor text links pointing to different pages on the site - many links going to the same page, just with different keywords. These links are not indistinguishable in format from the other text, which is why we only noticed it with a tool. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that to start with, but once all these links are there, would you recommend taking them down? Is there any conceivable chance it could help the site? Is there a significant reason to think it will harm the site? Or will it just be pretty neutral? In all that's been written (much by SEOMoz) about only the first link's anchor text counting, do subsequent links work like a no-follow in the sense that they are a waste of the link-juice of the page, or is it as if they aren't there at all? (And is "only the first link counts" still the most widely held theory, or have there been new developments since?) Thanks, All!
On-Page Optimization | | debi_zyx0
