Hiding Elements on Mobile. Will this effect SEO.
-
Hey guys and gals,
I am hiding elements with @media sizes on the mobile experience for this site.
http://prepacademyschools.org/
My question is when hiding elements from mobile, will this have a negative effect on rankings for mobile and or desktop?
Right now it is a hero banner and testimonial.
My interest is because I feel responsive is now working against conversions when it comes to mobile because desktop typically has the same info several times where mobile it can be repetitive and only needed once.
Thanks,
-
Hi Judd,
If you are only hiding these elements on the mobile view, this shouldn't cause an issue from a rankings perspective. You will want to make sure that they can access your CSS file (sometimes CSS files are blocked from crawlers).
It is possible that having it hidden will mean they discount that content slightly for the mobile version, but as long as they know it's a mobile version of the desktop site they will primarily take the desktop signals into consideration when it comes to rankings (with a small boost for mobile-friendliness in the mobile SERPs).
Once the mobile-first index rolls out this will change but they have stated that with mobile-first indexing, hiding content for space reasons won't negatively impact how they weight that content, so that shouldn't affect your approach practically speaking.
-
Hi Judd,
Google will for sure notice that you are hiding elements and probably also look thoroughly into it (algorithmically) but as long as it is for the user's sake, i.e. make the user experience better on mobile and its NOT about trying to cheat (SEO wise) somehow you are pretty much on the safe side. So no problem in my opinion.
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
-
Inbound links with malicious anchor text. Negative seo attack
Hi, What to do with more than 300 links with a malicious anchor text that has nothing to do with my content. I am disavowing those links for the last 5 years. Some of them are directed to URLs that have been changed more than 8 years ago. How can I block this malicious behavior? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Is toggle Good For seo
Hi there, I have Client Who dont want to show his content to publicly, So team decided to use toggle, So Google can also See Content, But i want bu sure. Does Google will really cache that Content?? Does it down my website Ranking?? Please any one can Help, I need urgent basis Thnx in advance Falguni
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iepl20010 -
Hide keyword tag or not?
We have a mandatory keyword tag field in our cms page templates, which we have to keep
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AMurelli
as our internal search facility bases queries on the keywords we use. Should we hide the keywords from the search
engines, as I read that Bing uses it as a spam signal? Or do we just need to stick to best practise ensuring the keywords match the keywords found in the body content? Many thanks for any help. Sophie0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Is Inter-linking websites together good or bad for SEO?
I know of a website that inter-links a handful of websites together (ex- coloring.ws interlinks to a handful of other sites, including dltk-kids.com, and others). Is this negative for SEO? I was thinking about creating a few related sites and inter-linking all of them together, since they will all be relevant to each other. Any thoughts would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Are the Majority of SEO Companies 'Spammers, Evildoers, & Opportunists'?
This may not be the most productive Q&A discussion, but I've had some really interesting experiences this last month that have made me even more distrusting of "SEO" companies. I can't help but think of this post (not much has changed since '09). Even though it takes a pretty extreme stance, I agree with the core of it - _"The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web." _ I didn't start doing this type of work wanting to have such a negative opinion of SEO companies, but I just keep having the same experience: I'll get referred to someone who isnt' happy with their SEO company. They send me their web address, I check out the site, and seriously can't believe what I find. MISSING PAGE TITLES, EVERY CANONICAL URL ISSUE IMAGINABLE, AND 10'S OF THOUSANDS OF BOT SPAM EMAT LINKS FROM PAGES LIKE THIS...AND THIS and just recently a company a called one of my clients and conned him into paying for this piece of spam garbage, obviously scraped from the site that I made for him. and what's worse, sometimes for whatever reason these companies will have all the client's FTP and CMS logins and it can be hell trying to get them to hand them over. There's no webmaster tools set up, no analytics, nothing.... These businesses are paying a good chunk of change every month, I just can't believe stuff like this is so common...well acutally, it's what i've come to expect this point. But I used to think most SEO companies actually had their clients best interest at heart. Does every honest consultant out there run into this same type of stuff constantly? How common is this type of stuff really? Now, on to the positive. This community rocks, and I feel like it represents real, ethical, solution-oriented, boundary-less SEO. So thank you Mozzers for all you do. and I love using the tools here to help businesses understand why they need an honest person helping them. If anyone has thoughts on the topic, I'd love to hear 'em...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SVmedia3 -
Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?
I'm seeing lots of "offers" springing up to do negative SEO on your competitors. I know people keep insisting this sort of thing is just a bogeyman, but follow my logic here: We know the Penguin update PENALIZED, and not just devalued "over optimization." Read: exact match keyword links. We know that if your link profile is too "unnaturally" keyword heavy, (it should be majority your brand or your domain or your company name, etc) you get penalized. Again, not devalued, PENALIZED. Ok. So what is to stop a blackhatter from using one of those software bots to just kill a competitor? Knowing the above two points, lets say a website is ranking for "cool widgets". Why not just create a bunch of exact match keyword spam links for "cool widgets" targeting that website. In a while, the Penguin penalty kicks in and bammo. The thing that scares me about the post Penguin landscape is that google has specifically named an activity ("over optimization") that will get you PENALIZED. So, don't do that, right? Except, that means they've explicitly outlined an activity that will be penalized, and is easy for others to do to you, and that you would be powerless to prevent. I await the usual "this is an age old worry that has never come true" replies. But if you reply that way, ask yourself, can you refute the logic of the points above? And also... oh no... It's happening. I'm seeing it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmcc1 -
How can I make use of multiple domains to aid my SEO efforts?
About an year, the business I work for purchased 20+ domains: sendmoneyfromcanada.com sendmoneyfromaustralia.com sendmoneyfromtheuk.com sendmoneyfromireland.com The list goes on, but you can get the main idea. They thought that the domains can be useful to aid http://www.transfermate.com/ . I can set up a few micro sites on them, but from that point there will be no one to maintain them. And I'm, honestly, not too happy with hosting multiple sites on one IP and having them all link to the flagship. It is spammy and it does not bring any value to end users. I might be missing something, so my question is - Can I use these domains to boost my rankings, while avoiding any shady/spammy techniques? P.S. I had this Idea of auctioning the domains in order to cover for the domain registration fees.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Svetoslav0