Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
-
Hi everyone,
I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text.
Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/
H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris
I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues.
Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks!
Tom
-
Hello Tom,
Five or six years ago this may have been a problem, but I seriously doubt it is right now. The text is clearly visible to humans and bots and you are not doing anything malicious. The div with the text appears over the image and it views fine in text and full mode when looking at Google's cache of the page.
Though both Pedram and Donford have answered your initial question well, I could not officially "endorse" them because I don't advocate keyword density ranges and do not agree that a manual review of the site would result in you being subject to any kind of penalty.
Write naturally for the topic at hand, focusing content on the correct keywords and topics with the goal of being helpful to the reader. Don't worry about manual checks for this because it will be obvious to the person looking at the site that nothing fishy is going on.
Good luck!
-
Hi Thomas,
The last I heard Google / Bing / MSN /Yahoo has no automatic way to know if you were obfuscating text. The way sites are built now, layers on layers or divs inside divs it would pretty difficult to decipher all the code to just check if there is hidden text. However, if a competitor catches you doing it, reports it, and then the Search Engines do a manual check you're likely going to get dinged.
I haven't seen anything new on this subject in a year or more but looking at your site I don't think this is your problem. In fact our corporate site uses white text on an image on every single page and we have no issues.
-
I doubt it. The titles aren't hidden at all. It looks good as you said, but it's not purposefully hidden at all.
As you said, there are many reasons as to why you're seeing dropped listings. You're targeting competitive keywords. Perhaps you should try to run a link audit on different websites on page 1 for your targeted terms and see what's going on with your competitors. Maybe they have a better (or worse) linking strategy or social share strategy than you?
Have you done a keyword density check on your site? Try to keep keyword density to around 1-3% (that's what's worked for us in the past).
Of course there are also the fundamentals: make sure you have keywords in all the right places (which it seems that you do - maybe consider putting keywords in the URL).
Hope this helps.
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
-
Mega Menus and SEO
Hi Everyone, I know this has been brought up before, but wanted your opinion for 2020. I have a new client that is hesitant to do a mega menu for their huge site due to the amount of links and "dilution". I have quite a few clients with mega menus with no problems at all from an SEO standpoint. But I can understand his perspective. I am suggesting that we have the main links (looking at GA) as the the navigation, then clicking them takes you to subcategory page listing all the subcats within. Problem is that the developer/designer has made this mega menu already and it is pretty slick. Now they already are killing it search-wise on Google, but don't have a mega menu or a secondary category page. Just a a category with too many products, so we are trying to go one way or the other. Any opinions on which route to best take from a user and SEO perspective?
Web Design | | vetofunk0 -
How is Single Page Application (SPA) bad for SEO
Hi guys. I am quite inspired of SPA technique. It's really amazing when all your interaction with the site is going on the fly and you don't see any page reloads. I've started implementing the site with this instruction and already found nice guys to make the design. The only downside of the using SPA which I can see **is the **SEO part. That's because the URL does not really change and different pages don't have their unique URL addresses.
Web Design | | Billy_gym
Actually they have, but it looks like: yoursite.com/#/products yoursite.com/#/prices yoursite.com/#/contact So all of them goes after # and being just anchors. For Google this mean all of these pages is just yoursite.com/ My question is what is really proven method to implement the URL structure in Single Page Application, so all the pages indexed by Google correctly (sorry I don't mention the other search engines because of market share). The other question, of course, is examples. It will be great to see real life site examples, better authority sites, which use SPA technique and well indexed by search engines.1 -
How to find out that none of the images on my site violates copyrights? Is there any tool that can do this without having to check manually image by image?
We plan to add several thousand images to our site and we outsourced the image search to some freelancers who had instructions to just use royalty free pictures. Is there any easy and quick way to check that in fact none of these images violates copyrights without having to check image by image? In case there are violations we are unaware of, do you think we need to be concerned about a risk of receiving Takedown Notices (DMCA) before owner giving us notification for giving us opportunity to remove the photo?
Web Design | | lcourse1 -
Does an age verification home page hurt SEO?
There's a microbrewery in our area that just launched its first website. It has the "verify your age" homepage (which is not really their homepage, but I don't know what it's called) before you can enter. It looks like this: http://angrychairbrewing.com/ Anyway, does this hurt them at all from a rankings standpoint? Also, assuming bots/spiders/ROGER can crawl sites like this, (which I think they would have to be able to do) how do they get around this verification? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Will SASS ruin my SEO?
Hello, I am thinking about using SASS for my website, striping the current CSS style sheets and translating it all to SASS.. will this hurt my SEO?
Web Design | | DanielBernhardt0 -
Replacing Slider Image WordPress
Hi Everyone, I decided to delete my slider from my homepage and replace it with a static image. However, after I deleted the slider, I'm left with a dark square where the slider used to be. I want to put my new static image in that same spot, but have no idea how. Does anyone know where or what code I should add to do that? The page is www.kempruge.com The WP Forums never seem to be too helpful for me, but Moz always is! Thanks in advance, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Pages vs. Posts for SEO
Hi, I would like your thoughts about pages vs. posts for SEO. I understand the difference in terms of WP structure and have read the SEOmoz blog post about setting up your site for SEO success (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). However, if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword, it seems that either one could work, from an on-page SEO perspective, as far as title tag, URL, meta description, etc. So how do you decide whether to set up a page vs. a post? What are the pros and cons, from an SEO perspective, about using one vs. the other? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Web Design | | csmm0 -
Live Text in Navigation Vs. Image - Does this affect SEO
I recently was asked the question if having live text in the navigation vs and image affect seo. For example, refer to this link http://markup.io/v/avsaenq856kw the navigation highlighted is seperate images. The html elements read : /images/procedures.png"> Live text html reads like this: Breast » What is better for seo value, or does it now matter having live text or an image?
Web Design | | Red_Spot_Interactive0