Opt-in Form as Hidden Text - what do you think?
-
Hi All,
I have at least 2 website that have opt-in form that isn't visible all the time (cookie related). Also, the thank you message will appear (obviously) only after signing in.
Here how it looks like:
Sign up to receive exclusive updates and special offers
Congratulations on joining our email list!
You will be the first to know about exciting news, red carpet updates, special offers, and much more.There seems to be a problem with a signup. Please try again later.
What do you think? It may penalize my website or do you find it legit?
-
Hi Shahar,
Thanks for the question.
As the other guys have said, it's hard to predict how the search engines will react to hidden content. In this case though, I highly doubt that this form would cause a penalty. You're not hiding this content with the intent of manipulation or anything like that and if a Googler were to look at this, they'd see that you're not to hide anything bad.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Hi Sharar,
It is hard to say definitively what the Search Engines will make of this text, as it is consistent between pages, they will likely class it as template content, rather than page content, but it will still be assessed as something.
To be on the safe side, is it possible to have this content only populate the
via javascript? I am assuming the Class or style on thatchanges so it appears, so when doing that, you could put the text in rather than just changing it's visibility?
However, doing this will take those words out of your word count, so I would recommend upping the text content on at least your most important pages, (if not all pages) to compensate for this.
Kind Regards
Jimmy
-
Anybody?
-
Hi Alice,
This form and code are on every single page, including the homepage
Do you still think it's not problematic?
When I check the cached version (text only) I can see it as part of the overall text
-
Hi Sahar,
As far as I know crawler doesn't submit form and crawler wouldn't find the page that comes after submission. No it won't penalize your site.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Hi,
As the hidden text does not contain any of your keywords, I would be surprised if any search engines had a problem with the content in such a markup.
If that content was keyword heavy and hidden from view then you would be likely to incur scrutiny from the search engines.
Kind Regards
Jimmy
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
-
Least Text for Home Page
We are rebranding our web site and intend to create more visual pages with less text on the assumption that no one want to read anymore. What is the least amount of text that we can include in a home page without damaging out ability to rank on Google? Google recently increased the permitted amount of text on description tags. Can we shift text to the description tax and place more on ALT tags that are not immediately visible to visitors. Any thoughts, comments, advice?? I am adding image of the old home page and new home page (text to be written, 3 columns of dummy text) so the change in the amount of text is visible. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan GkvnNR8 UH9ptbh0 -
Multiple H2 with no direct links to content and invisible body text - is this an issue?
OK, so we've lost pagerank and I think it's because of the way our site works (and we operate it). We have a videofolio, which shows on most of our pages, showcasing our work. Over time, we have tended to unpublish these pages and created new videofolio pages to show on our home page and relevant pages. The videofolio is a set of pages, each with a title, body text and a place to insert a link to the video, which is played through a videofolio showcase on our website (www.curveball-media.co.uk). Each is set a category, e.g. film, and when the user clicks the tab for 'film', the thumbnails pop up and the user can play the video. We have to work it this way as it's the only way to remove the videos from showing on our home page and to show new content instead. Simply deselecting a category still allows the videos to be seen when the 'all' category is selected by the user. Last week, I found a way of bringing back these unpublished pages by removing the 'all' tab from the videofolio. Then I turned each one into a blog like structure instead. Essentially, instead of the video link being played through the videofolio, we deselected a category (e.g. animation, film etc) and left the page floating. The only way you can access it without being attached to a videofolio category is through the direct link. By turning off the 'all' category and deselecting the page from any other categories, we were able to properly SEO these pages. NB: If they are created for use with the videofolio, you can have only extremely limited body text and no H2, as this is the text that appears when you hover over the video thumbnail. That's just the nature of the template. What I didn't anticipate is that now the code on the home page shows all these now (un)published pages and their corresponding H2 tags. Without a category selected, there is no way to get to these pages unless I create a direct link. I plan to do this through a blog post. In the home page code, the entire videofolio page shows, including the body text and link to the video. **This text doesn't show on the home page though, i.e. the user never sees this text. ** 1. Is it an issue to have so many similar H2 tags on the homepage? 2. Is it an issue that the code has text which is essentially invisible on the home page? 3. Is it an issue that the content is not linked to through the home page visibly? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
Mobile homepage title is showing unrelated text
Hi all, I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.leibish.com/I just discover it today - when searching on mobile for the brand name (search for "Leibish") I find the following title: Reply (see the attached image).Also, when searching for site:leibish.com +reply you'll find at least a few dozens indexed pages with this title.I checked for the following:1. Link bombing - check with ahrefs and majestic - everything seemed fine.2. Alt tag or other hidden text - couldn't find anything. 3. DMOZ or Yahoo directory submissions with this anchor text - yet, nothing.Besides the fact that I must fix this issue I find it fascinating from the SEO perspective. I need the big guns in here - can you help my resolve this mystery? :-)Thanks...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoperad0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Is my text readable? I don't see it in the page source
Text on my site seems to be readable in a text only version (the page is not cached so I viewed it by disabling JAVA and then copy and pasted the page into Word) However, when I look in the page source I don't see the text there. The text was created using Open X html boxes to help us with formatting, but is this causing an SEO problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
How Can Google tell, if a anchor text is exact match
So, I was thinking to myself today. Couldn't Google say everything is an exact match anchor text in reality? Such as, Hyundai in Boston, Or cars in boston? I'm just concerned, that's all. Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterRota0 -
Large scale change of incoming anchor text/alt tag image links
I provide SEO services in-house and for clients for a ecommerce and web design company. For every client site we create or host we provide a image link on the bottom linking back to our company website. I started researching competitors that offer same services for our industry that have top Google rankings for all the terms we are targeting and i just realized they rank that well because their image/anchor text link they place on client sites is alt tagged for that specific keyword. We have not been optimizing or utilizing this easy keyword backlink method. I am now wanting to go to all of our clients sites and change our backlinks to target the keyword we are optimizing for but my concern is will that number of incoming anchor text/image alt tag links cause us to get penalized from google for either over optimization or them seeing 100's of backlinks keyword specific just change overnight. What is the best way to go about this change in a safe way to avoid or risk penalty from Google? 99% of all of our client backlinks are in the footer so they show up on every single page and they are all images. Would it have a different affect if i add a alt tag to those images so that we get the oncoming link juice of that specific keyword? One of my concerns is over optimization, since some of our clients have 1000's of pages on their website. so that is 1000's of incoming exact match keyword links. I feel like the danger is low for being penalized but i would rather be safe then sorry and get additional feedback. Thanks, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
SEOMoz Link Directory - As Silly as I think it is?
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE SEOmoz, but their "Link Directory" (www.seomoz.org/directories) is a bit deceiving. I was looking for a list of DIRECTORIES that Moz recommends, not a bunch of places where you can pay for advertising. On top of that, it also lists dmoz as one of the spots to get links from, but have you ever actually ever been able to get a link from dmoz? I know I haven't, and we've been trying to get a link for years. Anyone else disappointed in this list? Does anyone have a good list of directories? -Andy P.S. I love you SEOmoz! Don't hate me for this critique!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alhallinan1