Hiding Links Under A Tab As Good As Anything Else And More Attractive?
-
I'm working with a site that finds standard linking to spread authority to interior pages ugly. Here's what they don't like:
-
footers
-
tag clouds
-
sidebar lists of links
-
text heavy paragraphs with links
-
a gallery of images with alt text/links
So, I'm looking for other ways to link from their homepage to these less prominent pages inside the site. Here are my two questions:
1. Would something like this work, with the links under the "Specs" tab (p.s., this is just a random example and not my client):
http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/CL57925/
2. Any other ideas for spreading the authority via links from their homepage and other pages on the site to less powerful pages?
Thanks! Best...Mike
-
-
Hey, thanks Sheldon!
-
In my opinion, there's nothing greyhat about those tabs, Mike. The mouseover makes it quite obvious that it's a navigation link, and in reality, you're not even taking the user to another page. I wouldn't hesitate to use it myself.
-
Thanks Ryan!
I think it's a technique that could lend itself to borderline grey hatness, just because it doesn't really seem geared to the user and you could really bury a ton of links. In this particular example, the links don't appear as links until you roll over them. Maybe just a design goof. Thanks!
-
The links are clearly visible in HTML so Google will pick up on them. The links are accessible to visitors. It is basically a different form of a drop down menu. You click the menu button, then the page changes not terribly unlike a frame.
My gut feeling is this is grey hat SEO, but I can't place my finger on where it crosses the line. A webmaster can say "hey, the links are clear and available to anyone who wants to see or use them." and they would be right.
What makes it grey to me is clearly most visitors would never see those links.
Overall, I would be ok with using that technique, but I would give preference to the image idea I shared if that was a reasonable option.
I would be interested to hear feedback from others on the topic.
-
I'm probably not explaining it very well. Sorry.
You go here: http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/CL57925/
You click on the "Specs" tab. You get a new tab which breaks down info by "Compatability, Color, Styles & Sku". Under "Styles" there's a line that reads:
"black, CMJ, convertible, ipad, iPad2, iPad 2, snap, snap case"
Those links.
-
I must be missing something. I do not see any line for Styles.
I did a CTRL+F for Specs and their is only one instance of Specs on the page. I did a search for "styles" and that term is not found on this page.
Here is a link to a screenshot of what I see: http://www.terapvp.com/data/external/specs.jpg
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the message. I only say "hiding" in the sense of making text links less prominent design-wise. So, instead of having columns of text links, to do something more attractive, maybe with images or tabs or something.
On the example under the "Specs" tab, there's a line for "Styles." Those terms are links to other pages.
Do you think those links under "Styles" get picked up by a Google bot and valued as well as any other kind of link?
Thanks! Best...Mike
-
Hi Mike.
Would something like this work, with the links under the "Specs" tab?
I am not clear on what you mean when you refer to links under the Specs tab. I do see the Specs tab on the site you mentioned. I see it in a navigation bar: About, Features, Specs, Reviews. That is a perfectly acceptable way to offer a link. There is nothing hidden about it. Am I missing something?
Any other ideas for spreading the authority via links from their homepage?
The only idea that comes to mind to "hide" links is you can link images to the links. If you have a site similar to the one you mentioned, you can have a line of thumbnail images of various products with each image being a link to a different page within your site.
The moment you say "hiding" alarms go off in my head. As long as the link is clearly visible and usable to visitors, then there is no problem with it. You certainly do not have to call attention to the link, but if you actually hide it, you've crossed the black hat line.
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
-
Internally linked pages from different subdomain must be well optimised?
Hi all, We have guide/help pages from different subdomain (help.website.com). And we have linked these from 3rd hierarchy level pages of our website (website.com/folder1/topic2). But help.website sumdomain & pages are not well optimised. So, I am not sure linking these subdomain pages from our website pages hurts our rankings? Thanks,
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Hiding content until user scrolls - Will Google penalize me?
I've used: "opacity:0;" to hide sections of my content, which are triggered to show (using Javascript) once the user scrolls over these sections. I remember reading a while back that Google essentially ignores content which is hidden from your page (it mentioned they don't index it, so it's close to impossible to rank for it). Is this still the case? Thanks, Sam
Web Design | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
Nofollow links to resources used to save bandwidth?
I have a site on volusion, www.ecowindchimes.com. Until recently I was doing fairly well (top 3 for keyword(s) for 6 years) in serps. I was hit by the an update around july of last year, and did a full page redesign in november. My site has been losing ranking for its main keyword "wind chimes".
Web Design | | sbetzen
One change I noticed is that no-follow was removed (when the designers added a lightbox popup for the sound) from the many many links I have for my sound files of the wind chimes (I house them on a separate server to save bandwidth, which is expensive at volusion). The webaddress the sound-files are on doesn't even have a page... it is just there for the files. (there are ~100 files linked to on almost every page of the site where a product listing shows). Should I go through and no-follow all of these links again? Is that hurting me?
I suspect it is, but it is a lot of work for nothing if that is not the problem.0 -
What else should you call the Home page?
In the menu bar and footer the main page is called Home. Would it confuse people to rename it to Business Name Home or Business Name? How do you handle this?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Sub-pages with more links than homepage - bad?
Hi,
Web Design | | rayvensoft
I am working on merging a number of my niche websites into a larger site (301 redirects, phased in over a few months). My question/concern is whether google will penalize the main site when it sees that the homepage has almost no links to it, and that about 10-15 sub-pages have a lot of links back to it. Does anybody have experience with this kind of scenario? Will it create a problem? Theoretically I could spend a year or so building up links to the new main page - building the brand - before doing the 301's. The smaller pages still bring in clients, but it is getting hard to maintain that many micro sites. Thanks in advance for any help.0 -
Landing Page - is this one a good landing page?
Hello Everyone, I want to ask about this landing page: http://www.rpgdicas.com.br/builds/diablo-2/build-necromancer-summoner-diablo-2.html It's in portuguese-brazil. What should I improve? Any tipps will be apreciated keywords: Build Necromancer Summoner, build necromancer summoner diablo 2, so on... thanks, everyone.
Web Design | | augustos0 -
Keyword rich footer links negative effect
Based on bits and pieces of information I've read on SEOmoz, am I correct to state that:
Web Design | | Partouter
"Keyword-rich footer links effect pages negatively in terms of the keyword referenced in the anchor text?" This means footer links in Thanks in advance fellow Mozzers!0