Read More & SEO

[Cheri11]

I have just had my site redesigned. The site was designed with only important facts bullets  at the top of the page and all other information is below in the read more section that expands when clicked.

I am wondering if I need to have this information in the read more section visible to the customer or if having the majority of the text in the read more is OK? and how it will effect rankings having it this way?

I have had spots #1 &2 on Google for my keywords- until the site was redesigned...wondering if this was part of the reason.

I have moved some of the text up to be visible on some of the pages  - but  it makes the site look cramped - and competes with the ease of use the site design

Any insight on this is appreciated.

[ORob]

There are no guarantees, as you know. I would be weary of that strategy long term as I mentioned. If it doesn't raise a flag with Google now, it could someday.

[Cheri11]

Thanks for the reply-

I should have been a little clearer on this- I did lose rankings but mostly  had to do with the switch to the new site not having redirects done correctly. the company that did the redesign dropped the www from the name and a huge list of things. I contacted and SEO company  (im a newbie) and they were able to fix most of the errors in that respect.

They had mentioned to me that I had too much hidden text (under read more buttons)  And that I should move this text to be visible, i did this for most of the pages but the site was not designed like this so now I to have the whole site redesigned to be able to have that area visible. I understand that I need visible relevant text-  I just need to find that middle ground where I have enough text yet the site still looks clean.

You did answer the question- just wanted to make sure I understand you correctly...  that in having text in a read more area that as long as Google is recognizing it (it is) that is should not effect the site in getting our lost rankings back??

[ORob]

I have seen this implemented many times. It seems as though as long as you make it clear to the user that there is more text for them to interact with, that you may be ok. I can't say I've seen anyone be directly penalized for it.

With that said, I am not the biggest fan of it - and I haven't found a reason to need to use it yet.

Are you saying you lost rankings? With a redesign I would examine the old code compared to the new code. I would check the page speed. I would examine how the text was placed before to how it is now.

Use the "fetch as googlegbot" option in webmaster tools to make sure they are accessing all text. Do some exact phrase match queries to make sure they are relating that text to your site in search. There may be other things in the redesign that could impact your rankings, but ultimately how likely is a user to expand that text? Would you? If Google is sophisticated enough to recognize that (likely) and notices that no one is interacting with that text - then they may not use it in relevancy.