Is white text on a white background an issue when...?
-
Hi guys,
This question was loosely answered here (http://www.seomoz.org/q/will-google-index-a-site-with-white-text-will-it-give-it-bad-ratings), but I wanted to elaborate on the concern.
The issue I have is this,
http://www.searchenginexperts.com.au/preview/white-text-white-background-issue
Of the four div elements on the page, which;
-
is best practice for SEO? and
-
which of them would not be penalized by google on the grounds of hidden text?
The reason I ask is that I have a site that is currently implementing the first div styling, but if you either remove the image OR uncheck the repeat-x (in inspect element) the text is left as white on white.
I have added the transparent image on green to prove that having a background colour to back up the tiled image is not always going to work. What can be done in this scenario?
Thanks in advance,
Dan (From my managers account)
-
-
Yes Dan something like that could get reported. You should do your best not to have this happen, mostly on a large scale, a single incident would likely be ignored.
-
Thx Gents,
To clarify, the content in question was footer links on my clients site.
It sounds like the consensus is that the approaches I have in the example should be fine as my intention is not to deceive and only visitors (most likely competition) would flag this manually if it was.
What remains unanswered is that the last two examples on my test page will still create issues.
The third example inadvertently has a transparent section of the background image where text exists. You can see this if you click/drag over the middle section. I would imagine this would get flagged by visitors as hidden text (as it currently shows white text on white), but aside from offering a complimentary background colour to either the div element or the entire site (say a pastel colour) is there a better way to manage this than the fourth example (where I have simply offer a fallback green colour. This looks pretty bad)?
Thanks again...
Dan
-
Hey Dan
Ultimately, I don't think this would be a problem on an otherwise non spammy site. There is generally a big difference between a site that is using a set of spammy or manipulative techniques and one that makes a simple mistake like this so I doubt you have much to worry about if everything else is as it should be.
That said, I guess the simple question here is:
If you are using a background image and white text, why not use a background colour as well?
This would address the obvious usability issues relating to the image not displaying and clarify that there is no bad intention here to trick anything. Better for users, better for search engines, better for your SEO penalty related anxiety issues.
Hope that helps.
Marcus
-
Dan the rule of thumb is if the text is readable and not purposelessly hidden then you're safe. The operative word there is purposelessly.
I will also add that in general crawlers are not going to find these types of problems rather they are reported by users or more often than not your competition. From there search engines may have a human evaluate the report and make a manual ruling.
-
Ok the thing is, if text is humanly readable, you are safe. Just because you are using white texts and then something goes wrong with the style and the texts go invisible for a few days will not necessarily get your website banned. However, here I am assuming that you are not stuffing keywords there
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
-
SEO issues with masking blog domain?
We have a client who would like to move their Wordpress blog into a different server from their main site's server for security reasons. However, the blog is almost 10 years old with good traffic and rankings and we'd rather not have them change the domain. The developer has come back with a URL "masking" rule in .htaccess that will display the contents of the blog placed in the new server under a subdomain but still show the blog's original URL. If we block the new subdomain from indexing to avoid duplicate content - are there any SEO implications for doing this? Will Google see it as a deceptive practice and tank the blog's rankings? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout0 -
One click links, followed ? anchor text ?
Hello, Just wondering google follows on clicks links (links create in a nice button) and anchor text. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Should you bother disallowing low quality links with brand/non-commercial anchor text?
Hi Guys, Doing a link audit and have come across lots of low quality web directories pointing to the website. Most of the anchor text of these directories are the websites URL and not comercial/keyword focused anchor text. So if thats the case should we even bother doing a link removal request via google webmaster tools for these links, as the anchor text is non-commercial? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
Issue with site not being properly found in Google
We have a website [domain name removed] that is not being properly found in Google. When we run it through Screaming Frog, it indicates that there is a problem with the robot.txt file. However, I am unsure exactly what this problem is, and why this site is no longer properly being found. Any help here on how to resolve this would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo1 -
What is Google supposed to return when you submit an image URL into Fetch as Google? Is a few lines of readable text followed by lots of unreadable text normal?
I am seeing something like this (Is this normal?): HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Autoboof
Server: nginx
Content-Type: image/jpeg
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:23:04 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:55 GMT
X-Request-ID: v-8dd8519e-8a1a-11e5-a595-12313d18b975
X-AH-Environment: prod
Content-Length: 25505
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:24:11 GMT
X-Varnish: 863978362 863966195
Age: 16
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive
X-Cache: HIT
X-Cache-Hits: 1 ����•JFIF••••��;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 75
��C•••••••••• •
••
••••••••• $.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C• ••••
•2!!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222��•••••v••"••••••��••••••••••••••••
•���•••••••••••••}•••••••!1A••Qa•"q•2���•#B��•R��$3br�
••••%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz���������������������������������������������������������������������������•••••••••••••••••••
•���••••••••••••••w••••••!1••AQ•aq•"2�••B���� #3R�•br�0 -
Rankings disappeared on main 2 keywords - are links the issue?
Hi, I asked a question around 6 months ago about our rankings steadily declining since April of 2013. I did originally reply to that topic a few days ago, but as it's so old I don't think it's been noticed. I'm posting again here, if that's an issue I'm happy to delete. Here it is for reference: http://moz.com/community/q/site-rankings-steadily-decreasing-do-i-need-to-remove-links Since the original post, I have done nothing linkbuilding-wise except posting blog posts and sharing them on Facebook, G+ and Twitter. There are some links in there which don't look great (ie spammy seo directories, which I'm sending removal requests to) although quite a lot of others are relevant. Here's my link profile: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a> I've tried to make the site more accessible - we now have a simple, responsive design and I've tried to make the content clear and concise. In short, written for humans rather than search engines. As of the end of November, 'nuts and bolts' has now disappeared completely, and 'bolts and nuts' is page 8. There are many pages much higher which are not as relevant and have no links. We still rank highly for more specialised terms - ie 'bsw bolts' and 'imperial bolts' are still page 1, but not as high as before. We get an 'A' grade on the on-page grader for 'nuts and bolts, and most above us get F. I was cautious about removing links as our profile doesn't seem too bad but it does seem as if it's that. There are a fair few questionable directories in there, no doubt about that, but our overall practice in recent years has been natural building and link earning. So - I've created a spreadsheet and identified the bad links - ie directories with any SEO connotations. I am about to submit removal requests, I thought two polite requests a couple of weeks apart prior to disavowing with Google. But am I safe to disavow straight away? I say this as I don't think I'll get too many responses from those directories. I am also gradually beefing up the content on the shop pages in case of any 'thin content' issues after advice on the previous post. I noticed 100s of broken links in webmaster tools last week due to 2 broken links on our blog that repeated on every page and have fixed those. I have also been fixing errors W3C compliance-wise. Am I right to do all this? Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'm still not 100% sure if this is Panda, Penguin or something else. My guess is Penguin, but the decline started in March 2013, which correlates with Panda. Best Regards and thanks for any help, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone0 -
Diversifying anchor text question
Hi, I've seen a new article by Dr. Pete on diversifying links for 2013 (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-1-seo-tips-for-2013), now my question is this: Dr. Pete talks about mixing up the anchor text for links, is so we don't get caught out by Google or actually mixing it has a better impact? For example: 1. 20 anchor text links targeting just the target term. 2. 20 anchor text links targeting 4 variations of the target term. Is number 2 recommended so things look natural or does it actually have a better impact on SEO. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Issues with Load Balancers?
Has anyone ran into SEO issues with sites utilizing load balancing systems? We're running into some other technical complications (for using 3rd party tracking services), but I'm concerned now that the setup could have a not-so-good impact from an SEO standpoint.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BMGSEO0