Hiding body copy with a 'read more' button
-
Hi
Whats the consequences of hiding half of the lovingly crafted body copy/written content (good quality modern version of what we used to call seo text) i have written for a clients main site sections and then having a 'read more' button to reveal ?
I have written 500+ words for each page but client wants to reduce word count displayed since thinks looks too 'wordy'!
I know that this is possible and used to be fine if done in a manner that was still crawlable, is this still the case ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dana
i did tell the devs to do as you recommended (CSS divs etc) but they just replied saying they did it through javascript instead, but should be ok since on page load the text is defaulting to show. Do you think that would be ok or inadvisable to use java at all as i have also heard elsewhere ? (there has been a drop in rankings since they did this so i'm thinking not ?
All Best
Dan
-
really !? i see it as other way round. SEO text short an kw stuffed and currently long 3-400+ highly descriptive and good quality content copy that includes kw simply by virtue of the being descriptive and useful
-
Old fashioned SEO text would be loads of copy per page. A short paragraph explaining things for the user should be sufficient in most cases.
-
i thought pages needed loads of good copy 500+ words ideally ? instead of old fashioned seo text
-
Probably won't hurt, but won't help either. Could be seen as spammy if you ever had a manual reviewer from Google go over your site. 500+ words per page is overkill.
-
You are welcome Dan!
-
many thanks Dana
-
Hi Dan,
Yes, if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable
tags it's totally fine. It's understandable why from a design standpoint it might be much more attractive to have a page with less words on it. Justin Taylor (@justingraphitas) actually did a bang-up job in a Mozinar on designing for SEO that discusses this exact topic: http://moz.com/webinars/designing-for-seo
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
Canonical tags in the body?
Hi there, Does anyone know if placing canonical tags in the body instead of the header of a page will still "take"? The system we are on means that making an editable header is no easy business and I was just wondering how big of a difference it makes to have it in a different area. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Whittie0 -
Hit by Panda 4.1 and it couldn't be more wrong!
Hi, I'm scratching my head with this one, I have a website with around 40 pages of unique content produced by a professional copywriter who works magazines and PR agencies - each page has around 750/1000 words - according to Google the reading age is intermediate as you would expect from a good copywriter, I have anchor points jumping around the page to information the user shows an interest in - this happens I have video recording and heat maps. I also receive 100s and on some pages 1000s of social shares from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and G+. I wanted to build a site the way Google wants you to so I have done no link build at all, everything focused onsite so I just spent the last 2 months making the whole site responsive for mobile and tablet devices - I also spent time getting the load time down and 'was' in the process of hooking into a CDN for extra performance. Ive done everything I can to make the site just good and its reflected in the social sharing and natural links from sites such as huffington post. On the 23rd my sites rankings which were solid for over 2 years have crashed, but what's worse is ive been dropped and replaced with sites using the same tactics as the Payday Loan industry, and it seems great favouritism has been given to sites containing Adsense - I can see ranking one page sites with less than 300 words content and 3/4 ad units above the fold and sites which have taken chunks of content off Wikipedia and rank. Thumbs up Google, great job.
On-Page Optimization | | followuk0 -
My site's articles seem to never show up in Google.
This is in regards to a previous post that was answered for me:
On-Page Optimization | | Ctrl-Alt-Success
http://moz.com/community/q/my-site-s-name-not-ranking-in-google I was talking to a friend and he suggested I try to type in an article in google with the exact name followed by my site's domain name without the .com For example, I have an article entitled: "MULTITASKING IS BAD FOR YOU, MKAY?" Obviously it's a title most would not word in that way. I typed it in and followed it up with my site's domain minus .com. So "MULTITASKING IS BAD FOR YOU, MKAY? ctrl-alt-success" But I'm not even getting listed in the search. There's got to be something I'm missing. I understand backlinks are important for ranking, but when I'm trying to find an exact match along with my site's url minus the .com? I just have this strong hunch that something is awry. NOTE: It seems this is only with google. If I use Bing or Yahoo, it comes up just fine.0 -
Why don't all my pages have On Page Optimization Reports
Apologies if this question has been asked a million times, but I can't find it. I have 35 pages, yet only 5 of them have generated On Page Optimization Reports. I know I can create them manually, but wondered if I've done something incorrectly? Iain.
On-Page Optimization | | iainmoran0 -
Wordpress pages URL's redirection.
I was checking W3C Markup Validation and in report it was shown that that pages (not post or any other URL's just PAGES) at investmentcontrarians.com are 301 redirected. e.g. original URL "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis" which is redirected to "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis/" I know that its not that serious issue, but still want to know why only pages are being redirected and how can we avoid it.
On-Page Optimization | | NumeroUnoWebSolutions0 -
Does show/hide element with javascript impact SEO
Hi I am developing an ecommerce site and want to place text on all category and home page. The challenge is that 300 words of text for the pages does not fit into the design appropriately especially on the home page. If I were to use a show/hide element with javascript would this be seen as spam or a trick to the search engines. I do not think it is spam as it will be actual content for the site and the visitor can view it if they click on the show button. Would love to hear your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | VivaArturo0 -
Google's Page Layout Algorithm Change
Hello Everyone, Google says they've implemented this change because they are answering the complaints of users who have to search for actual content after they've clicked on a result. They go on to say users want to see content right away. Now while most of this talk is about ads, I wonder if this will also apply to websites that are image and flash heavy above the fold with very little content. I am working on a few auto dealer sites where 99% of the content above the fold are flash banners and images. Below all of this noise you can find about 200 words of text talking about their dealerships. I'd love to know everyone's thoughts on this...Does the new page layout algorithm change apply to only ads or to images and flash as well? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | wparlaman0 -
Value of PDF's in SEO
I have a client who has a lot of information in PDF form. They think they should move some of it over into HTML pages so it indexes better. Is there a benefit to converting these PDF's into HTML pages? It seems to me that HTML pages would be good, IF they are relevant pages that could be used online.
On-Page Optimization | | lvstrickland0