Content hidden behind a 'read all/more..' etc etc button

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

Anyone know latest thinking re 'hidden content' such as body copy behind a 'read more' type button/link in light of John Muellers comments toward end of last year (that they discount hidden copy etc) & follow up posts on Search Engine Round Table & Moz etc etc ?

Lots of people were testing it and finding such content was still being crawled & indexed so presumed not a big deal after all but if Google said they discount it surely we now want to reveal/unhide such body copy if it contains text important to the pages seo efforts.

Do you think it could be the case that G is still crawling & indexing such content BUT any contribution that copy may have had to the pages seo efforts is now lost if hidden. So to get its contribution to SEO back one needs to reveal it, have fully displayed ? OR no need to worry and can keep such copy behind a 'read more' button/link ?

All Best

Dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for sharing the interesting info Evan !

Have a great weekend !

All Best

Dan

[HashtagHustler]

Well, we have taken the big parts, like the valuable metas, and made sure those were visible, and over the next month or two we are slowly adding pieces of the content back into the main portion of the page.

A lot of the content was just fluff, and really wasn't helping us. Our original website was 600 pages, of those 600 pages only about 40 were actually ranking, so what we did across the board was make new pages to exemplify our services better, with better URL's, better optimization etc, then we took the old pages that were currently ranked, and brought them over UNTOUCHED with the same url and are putting them in the blog section.

Over the next month, we will slowly be pushing people to the pages we want people to be landing on. So, essentially, all of the ranked content is still on the site, in one way or another, in as untouched as possible. We also added new, optimized content, that is now the core of our website, and did a lot of outside marketing to help add to the potential traffic loss from a site redesign.

We relaunched on Sunday, and so far our numbers are pretty on par! So, we will see, I will keep you updated!

-Evan

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks for commenting hashtag

and are you now going to try and show that content as per John Muellers/Googles comments that they will be discounting hidden copy ?

Have you noticed any change in ranking conforming to when you hid the copy ?

all best

dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for the excellent response Ray, this is exactly the info i was after

Re crawling indexing, Absolutely !! I think people presumed because it was still being crawled and indexed then everything was ok, but theres no reason why being crawled & indexed means that Google is not heavily discounting it and i think given JM comments that this is now very likely, so as you confirm, best to show all unique copy

Thanks

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks Sheena

The scenario im looking into this for is for a client for whom i wrote a load of home page body copy which they then got dev to hide 2 3rds of behind a 'read more' button and then text drops down.

The text inc keywords anchor tex rich links to sub pages to help on page seo so I presume that i should request this recently hidden copy should now be re-revealed since likely not counting towards the on-page seo anymore ? (the sites just been redesigned so no option to redesign again) but can get the copy unhidden or leave 'as is'

All Best
Dan

[HashtagHustler]

Good morning!

I will give you a real world example with the site I am in charge of. Our previous website was a horrendous grouping of words spun together into some sort of readable content. Somehow it did manage to gain some ranking. We redesigned the website and our new homepage has a much more beautiful layout and interactive design full of images.

In order to keep the text we included a tab system that would expand when clicked on it, the text it painful to read, but for now we need it, so we tried to hide it from the user as much as possible. If you look at the actual code it looks something like this (we use wordpress by the way):

[wptab name='Content']

Content here shows up above the tap, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla

[expand title="This is the expand button"]

this is all hidden from the user until they actually click the expand button.

[/expand]

[/wptab]

[Ray-pp]

Google never said that they would not be crawling and indexing the content and a quick Google search of your own pages should show that the content is being indexed, as it should.

However, JM's mention of it being discounted **is very concerning, **especially to ecommerce websites where tabbed information is very popular.

For this reason, I've chosen to look towards Amazon and their product page methodology. Most of us have probably been frustrated that Amazon outranks us in the SERPs, when it comes to ecommerce. They elect to show all the product information in one long, seemingly unfriendly UI. However, it works and works very well.

I'm moving away from tabbed content and electing to show longer product pages. The only content I'm keeping behind tabs is content that is common across my competitors, such as specifications, size charts, ect.

My reviews, product Q&As, and other pertinent information is being moved up to the front of the page to get the most authority as possible. I suggest doing the same.

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks Karl

so you think if its hidden is not contributing so i should reveal it ?

The contents wanted/needed so i don't want to get rid of it just want to know if its contributing at all when hidden or if as John Mueller said its discounted, so it should be re-revealed to get the seo benefit of keywords in the copy and anchor text rich links within it to sub department and product pages ?

All Best

Dan

[JVRudnick]

Yup...the content is not hidden from the googlebot...so it's still read, indexed and used....

But as Sheena noted, that's "old school" design thinking, eh!

[Sheena_Schleicher]

I agree with Kari's comment. Using this tactic is becoming more and more rare for me, as I have moved towards using tabbed content (which there's also a good amount of debate about its SE-friendliness) and anchor links for having additional content in an easy to navigate, lighter/better designed way. A good example is at http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro.

I hope this helps!

[KarlBantleman]

Google still crawls and indexes "hidden content" but from a user point of view if you have to hide it then it probably isn't worth reading. From experience, we use some css to dropdown extra content when the client insists on it being there but it is too long.

If it has to be there then I don't think it will be doing any harm but if you don't need it then get rid.