Static homepage content and javascript - is this technique obsolete?
-
Hi
Apologies beforehand for any minor forum transgressions - this is my first post.
I'm redesigning my blog and I have a question re static homepage content.
It used to be common practice in the online gambling sector (and possibly others) to have a block of 'SEO copy' at the footer of the homepage.
To 'trick Google' into thinking it was directly underneath the header, web devs would use javascript to instruct the html to load the div with the SEO copy first.
The logic was that this allowed for the prime real estate of the page to be used for conversion and sales, while still having a block of relevant copy to tell the spiders what the page was about, and to provide deep links into the site.
I attended a seminar just over a year ago at which some notable SEOs said that Google had probably worked this one out but it was impossible to tell. However, I've recently noticed that Everest Poker has what I think is the code commented out, and on PokerStars I can't find it at all (even in the includes).
I would be happy to post the Everest code but, while I've read the etiquette, I'm not 100% whether this is allowed.
So my question is... for the blog I'm redesigning, do I still need to follow this practice? I would prefer search engines saw some static intro text describing the site, rather than the blog posts, the excerpts of which will probably be canonicalized to the actual post pages to avoid duplication issues. But I would prefer this static content to appear below the fold.
What is current best practice here?
Alex
-
Thanks Edward
-
It would be possible to have the text at the beginning of the html document but then display it further down using CSS, not java script.
I don't think there is a massive need to do something like this. In the past Google may not have indexed all of the content from a page, especially if the document size was very large. This position trick would ensure that the important SEO focused content would be indexed.. if you build your site properly and take into account the size, page load speed, make sure the code is clean etc then there should be no need to move the content around.
-
Hi Vahe
Thanks for the response, and the article link - I'll take a look at that later.
However, I think you've misunderstood the situation. The content is not hidden - it's clearly visible and crawlable at the bottom of the page. However, it's placed in a div and that div is loaded immediately after the header, through the use of javascript.
I'm no javascript expert but Everest Poker appears to hvae commented the function out, and PokerStars appears to have removed it altogether.
If that is, in fact, what they've done (and I'm not misreading the code, which is possible), then my question is, does this 'trick' of placing text lower in the page, but telling spiders to crawl it first no longer work.
Hope that clears things up.
Alex
-
Hi Alex,
In my belief, unless served as alternative content, any hidden content is unethical SEO.
Have a go at content stacking - http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/move-up-your-web-page-content-for-better-search-en.html
Hope this helps,
Vahe
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
-
Shall we add engaging and useful FAQ content in all our pages or rather not because of duplication and reduction of unique content?
We are considering to add at the end of alll our 1500 product pages answers to the 9 most frequently asked questions. These questions and answers will be 90% identical for all our products and personalizing them more is not an option and not so necessary since most questions are related to the process of reserving the product. We are convinced this will increase engagement of users with the page, time on page and it will be genuinely useful for the visitor as most visitors will not visit the seperate FAQ page. Also it will add more related keywords/topics to the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
On the downside it will reduce the percentage of unique content per page and adds duplication. Any thoughts about wether in terms of google rankings we should go ahead and benefits in form of engagement may outweight downside of duplication of content?0 -
Does the url in for your homepage impact SEO
Is there any harm to SEO having a homepage url that is not clean like www.domain.com. For example citi uses https://online.citi.com/US/login.do Does that matter in any way? Would a company like citi benefit from changing to www.citi.com as their homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kcb81781 -
What is the fastest way to deindex content from Google?
Yesterday we had a client discover that our staging URLs were being indexed in Google. This was due to a technical oversight from our development team (forgot to upload meta robots tags). We are trying to remove this content as quickly as possible. Are there any methods in the Google Search Console to expedite this process? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Opinions on Boilerplate Content
Howdy, Ideally, uniqueness for every page's title, description, and content is desired. But when a site is very, very large, it becomes impossible. I don't believe our site can avoid boilerplate content for title tags or meta-descriptions. We will, however, markup the pages with proper microdata so Google can use this information as they please. What I am curious about is boilerplate content repeated throughout the site for the purpose of helping the user, as well as to tell Google what the page is about (rankings). For instance, this page and this page offer the same type of services, but in different areas. Both pages (and millions of others) offer the exact same paragraph on each page. The information is helpful to the user, but it's definitely duplicate content. All they've changed is the city name. I'm curious, what's making this obvious duplicate content issue okay? The additional unique content throughout (in the form of different businesses), the small, yet obvious differences in on-site content (title tags clearly represent different locations), or just the fact that the site is HUGELY authorative and gets away with it? I'm very curious to hear your opinions on this practice, potential ways to avoid it, and whether or not it's a passable practice for large, but new sites. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Penalized for Duplicate Page Content?
I have some high priority notices regarding duplicate page content on my website www.3000doorhangers.com Most of the pages listed here are on our sample pages: http://www.3000doorhangers.com/home/door-hanger-pricing/door-hanger-design-samples/ On the left side of our page you can go through the different categories. Most of the category pages have similar text. We mainly just changed the industry on each page. Is this something that google would penalize us for? Should I go through all the pages and use completely unique text for each page? Any suggestions would be helpful Thanks! Andrea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate content?
I have a duplicate content warning in our PRO account (well several really) but I can't figure out WHY these pages are considered duplicate content. They have different H1 headers, different sidebar links, and while a couple are relatively scant as far as content (so I might believe those could be seen as duplicate), the others seem to have a substantial amount of content that is different. It is a little perplexing. Can anyone help me figure this out? Here are some of the pages that are showing as duplicate: http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Seth+Green/?bioid=5554 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Solomon+Northup/?bioid=11758 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/?mediatype=audio+books&bioid=3665 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Marcus+Rediker/?bioid=10145 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Robin+Miles/?bioid=2075
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
Optimizing the HomePage of a WordPress blog
Dearest SEOmozzers, I am creating WordPress blogs and I would like to know from a WordPress expert how to better optimize the homepage of a site. In particular, I'd like to know how to create an SEO-friendly homepage that I want to optimize for certain keywords. Do you think that it is better to show on the homepage the posts that I write, which change constantly, or a static, well-optimized text that will include the keywords I want to rank for? I have been naively using the changing posts, but after an analysis of the competitors I have noticed that most of them use a static text and show only the most recent post at the bottom of the page. I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know the best practice to adopt to optimize the site. Thank you. Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Why duplicate content for same page?
Hi, My SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic warn me about duplicate content. However, to me the content is not duplicated. For instance it would give me something like: (URLs/Internal Links/External Links/Page Authority/Linking Root Domains) http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110516 /1/1/31/2 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110711 0/0/1/0 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110811 0/0/1/0 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110911 0/0/1/0 Why is this seen as duplicate content when it is only URL with campaign tracking codes to the same content? Do I need to clean this?Thanks for answer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuxeo0