Does 'jump to' navigation work with a hidden div?

[nicole.healthline]

Will jump to navigation work when using a hidden div? Basically, we use a navigation system such that when a user clicks on a title, it expands to show the rest of the article, each title has an anchor associated with it, but no where else on the page / site do we link to those anchors.

In order to make jump to navigation work, we are considering adding a hidden div with links to the anchors. Does anyone have experience doing this? Did it work?

[willcritchlow]

The best I can think of would be to link to the anchors from the page the "level" above.

In other words, on a category page (or equivalent), display links to the page plus its named anchors (actually, much like Google's sitelinks). It's impossible to weigh up the relative weight of links from within the page to links from elsewhere on the site without inside knowledge, but I would prefer this to hidden links.

[nicole.healthline]

Hi WIll,

Yes, I understand that 'jump to navigation' is determined algorithmically.

We can't actually link to the anchors because, as mentioned, the UI we've developed has better user engagement (one of our main goals is to improve user engagement site-wide). The anchors exist in a sort of expand / collapse format, so that the user can see the entire content and click on titles to see more.

I suppose the other option would be to put it in a hidden div, and add javascript so that the user could see the links if they wanted (even though, essentially, there isn't any value-add to the user since they can already see the content list)?

[willcritchlow]

Firstly, it isn't automatic for Google to add links to your in-page anchors no matter what you do.

It's hard to say for sure whether placing hidden links to the named anchors will work in your specific case - but I would say that if it does work, I'd view it as a short-term solution and probably more risky than I'd like to see for limited reward.

Why not actually link to the anchors? If you think that people might want to jump direct to them from the search results, mightn't people want to navigate to them when they're on your site as well?

There is essentially never a good reason for hiding information that you want Google to find - it should be there for the users as well.

[nicole.healthline]

Mainly, would google use 'jump to' sections of our page in the SERPs. We have anchors, but no links to the anchors, and are hoping that by adding a hidden div with links to the anchors, it will activate 'jump to navigation.'

The hidden div would be added just for the sake of adding the links to the anchors--it wouldn't be visible to users. We've found user engagement is higher for the type of navigation we built, but want to make sure 'jump to' works (is visiible in google SERPs).

Thanks in advance for your help.

[willcritchlow]

Hi Michelle,

What do you mean by "work"? Are you intending to have a way of exposing this hidden div (in a drop-down or similar)?

One of the most common uses of jump to navigation is for screen readers for the visually-impaired. I imagine that a hidden div could work well for that as they typically ignore CSS styling but I imagine it would need testing in the specific readers.

Happy to dig into this further if you have more info about your plans.