Legitimate hidden text and H1s are "OK?" Show me the data!

[integra-telecom]

I'm trying to promote the SEO perspective during a site redesign so I'm researching the impact of design requests:

• Embedding text in graphic headers and applying

  to the graphics to get the SEO value

• Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs.

SEOmoz uses these techniques on their ranking report and most of what I read in teh forums says it is OK to hide text if your motives are pure and the text displays in a text-only browser.

But I do SEO, not SEOK. I want to optimize, not just avoid penalties.  And I try to make decisions based on data, not just anecdotes. Are there any studies out there on the effects these hidden-text topics?

How much difference DOES it make to have the text exposed? Since there is potential for spam with these techniques, why would Google give the same rank to pages with and without hidden text? When I'm balancing UX and SEO, I want to clearly define the trade-off.

What have you done when faced with this dilemma?

[EGOL]

oh... those pages with the hidden text on Google properties....

I hate those pages.  Hate them.  Hate them.

They usually have trivial content too.  A whole page with a few sentences and you have to view 15 pages to get the information that you need.

They should be smacked by panda.

Did I say that I really dislike those pages.

[integra-telecom]

Thanks EGOL. It is good to have an example of the accordion technique hurting traffic. This is becoming so common I'm surprised there isn't more out about it. Interestingly, Google itself uses hidden text extensively in its Chromebook site, look at the content behind the tiles further down on the How It's Different page. And I frequently see

applied to images as is done on the carousel for Isite design. Is it just that they are counting on other factors?

I'd sure like to see an exhaustive study on this. (SEOmoz, this is your cue to jump in with data already out there or to take this research on!)

[EGOL]

Luke, here is the story....

I had a big FAQ page that was really long.  I wanted to organize it with an accordion page.   When people landed on the page they were instrucuted to "click a topic" and the accordion would open - when it opened all of the questions about a single topic were displayed.

When I installed the accordion page the words on the page changed very little but traffic into that page from google dropped by 80%.

So, I removed the accordion and placed topic links in large font at the top of the page.  when people enter they were still instructed to "click a topic".  The visitor was then moved down the page where questions about that topic were presented.

After changing that traffic from google search jumped back up.   Visitor engagement remained about the same - pageviews and time on site is about the same.

[LukeHardiman]

Thanks EGOL, this is an interesting piece of anecdotal evidence for me.

I have been wondering along the same lines as the OP - specifically because I'm a little concerned that Google is parsing javascript now (in some cases) and may be iffy about javascript copy truncation. However, I would view this in my own case, as a user experience improvement.

For example : I sometimes use javascript to truncate my copy where I feel it may push other content too far down the page. Some users will want to read the whole passage, but others will be scanning for the content further down.

Is this the type of 'hidden text' you are referring to? The full content is easily accessible at the click of a 'show more' link. The content is hidden by the javascript, so will be available to user agents that do not execute javascript.

[RyanKent]

I could not agree more with EGOL. Text on a web page should appear as text, not within images. With CSS3 and current design standards, there is rarely a reason to do otherwise.

About the only place on a site where I permit text within an image is within the logo.

I am not aware of even the slightest SEO value from applying a header tag to a graphic.

[EGOL]

"Embedding text in graphic headers and applying

to the graphics to get the SEO value"

I want as much text as possible on the page.  Every diverse word pulls in longtail traffic.

And... applying

to a graphic for SEO value?   Why do you think that will work?  Just use text.

"Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs."

Any time I have done this the SEO value of the text is lost.  That's what my analytics tells me from lost long tail traffic.

If a designer told me that he needed to hide text for design purposes.  I would challenge him to find a way to put the text on the page and make it look great.  If he was not up to that challenge I would have a new designer.

Others might disagree.  That's OK.