Has it increased your average time on page? That may indicate a good user experience so Google may reward you for it. However, as Chris has indicated, load times may suffer with live chat. We took live chat off our website because of this.

I'd include a button to say 'buy all ingredients for this recipe' and have it automatically add the ingredients to the users basket. Easy peasy user experience and you potentially get to increase the average basket value. Win win. You could also include individual buttons next to each product in the ingredients list on the recipe page (assuming it's labelled 'ingredients' and 'method'.)

I also wouldn't hid any text if you can help it - especially content that triggers a sale.

Why not use it to your advantage? E.G make all the products available in the recipes easy to buy from the recipe pages?

'Want to make this dundee cake? Buy all the ingredients here' (or similar).

You may of course already be doing this though.

I wouldn't have thought the presence of useful content to be a detriment to rankings.

Good luck!

Amelia

Using a word twice on a page is indeed, not keyword stuffing - where did I say that it was??? I don't believe I have EVER said that in all the years I've worked in digital marketing!

I said that using the same alt tag would be spammy - the reason I think that is that it either implies that you don't have unique images on the page (so what's the point of them?) or that you have been lazy with your alt tags by repeating the same one over again. Both bad user experiences for folk that need them.

Hi,

I just wanted to dispel a few myths going on here...

1. ALT tags are NOT to 'Tell Google' what the image is about, they are there for people who use screen readers to enrich their use of the internet.
2. Screen readers can be set up to read out alt tags, file names or title attributes - depending on the user's preference and presumably on the site they are looking at
3. Google can and does read image file names: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32567/A-Marketer-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-Images-for-Google-Search.aspx

If you pick relevant images for your pages then you probably will be able to get keywords into both the alt tag and the file name. I don't think this is spammy! It's accurate.

What would be spammy, and this has already been covered by Issac, is if you repeat the same alt text on the same page - vary it! - 'Blue lego bricks' etc. I personally would avoid saying stuff like 'cheap', 'buy' etc UNLESS the image has that text within it (say a picture of lego with a headline within the image saying 'cheap lego') in which case you are doing exactly what the alt tag is there for - enabling screen reader users to experience as similar experience to us sighted folk as possible.

Sorry for the rant, but it annoys me that something that is meant to help people who are (to my mind) at a disadvantage is abused for SEO purposes!

Best wishes,

Amelia

**EDIT: I am well aware that Google and other search engines use alt tags for rankings. What I wanted the OP to be mindful of is that alt tags were not invented 'to tell google what an image is about'. And to point out their value and use for people using screen readers. Most people do not fully understand how blind users navigate the inter-webs, me included. I just think if I can do something to make it easier for them then I will. If you'd prefer to write alt tags purely for the search engines, that is entirely your prerogative! **

I may be being pedantic here but I think the correct status code should be 410 not 404 if the page has gone for good and you don't have a relevant place to redirect traffic to, as per the scenario described.

I believe if Google finds a 410 page, it'll be removed from the index but because 404 is 'file not found' the page may stay in the index, potentially giving bad user experience as outlined by Matt Williamson.

However, I would always redirect if you can - even if you just send traffic to the homepage, it's got to be a better user experience than sending them to a 404 page. I think anyway!

More info here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes

You mention a concern over too many redirects - I think this page may help eliminate your fears: http://www.stateofdigital.com/matt-cutts-there-is-no-limit-to-direct-301-redirects-there-is-on-chains/

Thanks,

Amelia

Was going to suggest the same thing!