Hiding Text in an SEO friendly way - is it possible?
-
Hello,
I have a client who has very little (practically no) text content on his ecommerce website, on the home page and category / sub cat pages. We have drafted some text for him - but the designer has fought back against this as he feels it will break the design.
Our proposed solution is to have some text visible - and the rest will be text that is hidden but can be revealed by clicking Read More.
We are planning to follow these recommendations : http://www.shimonsandler.com/collapsible-div-seo-friendly/
We are not hiding text for the sake of it - but more to improve the UX. We of course want the text to be accessible - i.e. readable by screen readers.
Does anyone have any experience or opinions in respect to taking this course of action, and is there anything we should make sure we either do or not do to stay on the side of the BIG G?
Kind Regs,
Rich
-
This is gold dust - THANK YOU!!
-
Thanks Michael.
I agree completely. We are just trying to find a way to tick both boxes, UX and SEO - both of which, of course, are intricately connected. So an SEO friendly text reveal function seems like a good strategy all round. We are certainly not trying to hide text from users, and include it solely for SE's. I am just keen we do it in a way that is accessible and not in breach of Google's guidelines.
I usually push my opinion through and make sure there is text on the page, even if it looks ugly in a designers opinion. Because, ultimately, a site without traffic is not worth a whole lot, even if it looks amazing!
RB
-
Michael,
These are very clear steps that could be applied by many people in various situations.
You are a great leader !
Nice work!
E
-
Hi Rich,
Here you are not hiding anything for the fact. Hiding text is something else that would involve matching the color of the text with that of the background etc. Here you are just tying to make a better UX by having the Read More button that will reveal the content. The content is very much there on the same page and your intention is very clear here. Believe me my friend, Google has mastered the art of finding out the intentions of Webmasters by looking at the page and you will not have to bother about anything in this case.
Regards,
Devanur.
-
Clear and direct. The solution is change the designer.
-
Just to add to this.
A designers job is to design for content and design to make what they are creating successful.
I would start with informing the designer of the intended goals of the site. Then have a discussion around how they feel the current design they have created is accomplishing that.
If there are any holes in the design accomplishing those goals - then a discussion can take place on how strategy, content and design can come together.
The key is to help your designer understand this and lead the team to success.
If none of that works, talk to the owner and pull rank on the designer. Clients speak and think in terms of results - so make your case.
All you can do is provide thought leadership, fight for what you believe in and don't get pushed around or marginalized for common sense recommendations.
If no one wants to listen, you've just found a client not worth working for.
(But remember, it is your thought leadership and sensitivity to everyone's role that makes or breaks it, whether it be the owner, designer, developer, etc.)
Good luck!
-
:):) well said.
-
We have drafted some text for him - but the designer has fought back against this as he feels it will break the design.
I would not be able to have this person as a designer for one of my sites.
This person is not "on board" and I don't have time to pull his teeth.
Nuf said.
-
Hi Rich,
I think just this one act of hiding text will not get you in trouble however if you combine this with other black hat techniques or your site exhibits spammy behavior then you're definitely in trouble. If one is able to access all the content in a text only browser then you should be ok. I would still try and educate the client on having a small block of introductory text above the product and category pages that would also help with conversions.
Her's the official link on hidden text by Google.
Jill Whalen's forum addresses this question here
Here's another link on this topic
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
-
Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?
Hi folks. I would like to discuss pagination. I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically). I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc. I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution. My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important. I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue. So, what's the solution? Do I even need one? As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content. I would love your thoughts on all of this. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Least Text for Home Page
We are rebranding our web site and intend to create more visual pages with less text on the assumption that no one want to read anymore. What is the least amount of text that we can include in a home page without damaging out ability to rank on Google? Google recently increased the permitted amount of text on description tags. Can we shift text to the description tax and place more on ALT tags that are not immediately visible to visitors. Any thoughts, comments, advice?? I am adding image of the old home page and new home page (text to be written, 3 columns of dummy text) so the change in the amount of text is visible. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan GkvnNR8 UH9ptbh0 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Blog home page and SEO
Why do most blog owners not put content that is unique to the home page above the fold before posts begin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Local SEO for a community.
How would one go about best doing local SEO for a townhome community? It seems to fall in between the traditional imformational SEO and the brick and mortar, G+ page model. There seems to be no way to attack the NAP, directory and traditional citation model for a certain region they build in. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AESEO0 -
SEO friendly way to redirect users based on IP address
Hi There I have an issue where I need to redirect all visitors from a specific country to a sub-domain, which has content explaining to those users that our service is not offered in that country. I would like to know the most SEO friendly way to do this? Thanks Sadie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape0 -
SEO-friendly WordPress Templates
Hi, I usually build WordPress sites and I was thinking about buying one of those ready-made Wordpress templates I found on a site that sells them to the public. FYI, the site at issue is: yootheme.com. I'd like to make sure that building sites using ready-made templates is NOT a bad thing. Could you please confirm? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Seo for Q&A site
Hi, I am working on a newly launched Q&A site. We have very few questions and users right now and very very low seo traffic. In order to increase the number of users and seo traffic we intend to create a number of pages containing potential questions. Each page would have the following structure: Question. Ex: "What are the top wholesale suppliers of coffee in China?" Some content. Ex: Are you looking for wholesale suppliers of coffee in China? Post your question here? Question form Some additional content So there would be a page for wholesale suppliers of coffee for every country. We would publish the pages gradually and the content would be unique but yet similar (ex: only the Country changes). What do you think about this approach? Is it a good idea or can it be dangerous? We don't want to incur in any kind of penalization, we just want to give the possibility to people who are looking for specific information to find us and be able to post the request on our website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ypsilon0