Is hidden content bad for SEO?
-
I am using this plugin to enable Facebook comments on my blog:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/fatpanda-facebook-comments/This shows the comment in an Facebook iFrame. The plugin author claims it's SEO friendly, because the comments are also integrated in the WordPress database. The are included in the post but hidden.
Is that bad for SEO?
-
Providing an alternative way for search engines to access content that is not otherwise available to them, but is clearly available to anyone who "sees" the page is a legitimate use of the Display: None tag. Here is what Google has to say about it: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-hiding-content-17136.html .
-
Hm, I admit it's not so easy to explain the topic. Let me summarize it like this:
My site: WordPress
Issue: Regarding comments on a blog postComments: Usually WordPress uses it's own commenting system. Google can see the comments and this helps for SEO.
Comments on Facebook: To increase my comment rate, I am using a Facebook commenting plugin.
How does it work: Facebook uses an iFrame for comments, so they are visible in Front-End, but not in source code. But: The plugin is smart and takes those comments and puts them into the WordPress database. So WordPress shows the comments in the source code, but not in the Front-End. Only the Facebook comments are shown in the Front-End, but since it's an iFrame not in the source code.
So from Googles perspective the comments are visible in the source code, but they can't find them displayed in the front-end. The question is if that's a bad thing. The reason for me asking is, that some time back I read that lot's of black hats are using hidden content and that you should not do it.
-
Now I'm confused, you said "But it's not visible on front end side (except the Facebook comment iFrame)." Then "the hidden text is not inside the iFrame"
In the source code do you actually see the word iFrame?
-
In this case the hidden text is not inside the iFrame (WordPress comment database), and visible in the source code.
But it's not visible in the front-end.
-
Generally speaking anything in an iFrame will not be indexed for your site and therefore will provide no SEO benefit. So if the hidden text is within the iFrame this will have no positive or negative effect for your site.
-
That's a cool tool, didn't know that yet.
I used it and also checked in the source code. The hidden content is there. But it's not visible on front end side (except the Facebook comment iFrame).
Now is that bad?
-
A quick test for this would be to test your site in http://seo-browser.com and compare it to the same page source code (in browser right click 'View Page Source' or 'View Source' depending on browser) as I'm not sure what elements are being hidden
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
-
If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Designworks-SJ1 -
Worthwhile for SEO to buy a website with great links which is inactive for 30days and revive it with all its content and after a while transfer it to my core site?
When moving the content after a while to a subdirectory of my core website I would copy the full content and later further improve it. Would the external links that I redirect via 301 be counting similar to links I had earned in the first place? I understand that 301 redirect normally just implies minimal loss of link power. Topic of the site I consider to acquire is loosely related to my core site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
How bad are 403 errors compared to 404s in regards to technical SEO?
Google Webmaster Tools reports "Access Denied" 403 errors. They also provide an explanation of what they mean at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2409441?ctx=MCE&ctx=AD&hl=en. What are the implications of these Access Denied errors? Should they be 301 redirected internally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Images and SEO
Hi, I would like some opinions on the topic of using images for SEO. I have come across a few sites that I see have very few backlinks, but have decent pagerank and seem to rank well for certain keywords. One such site I looked at had very little content other than tons of images (It was a joke blog that focussed on funny images, funny pics etc) and now I am starting to question whether hotlinking images assists in SEO? are there any benefits to having someone using one of your images (hosted on your site) ? I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link. Any truth in this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rightmove0 -
SEO on page content links help
I run a website at the bottom we have scroller box which the old SEO guy used to contain all of the crap content so we can rank for keywords not on the page and put all of the links in to spread the link juice into the other inner category pages (some of these pages are only listed on our innerpages otherwise). We are trying to remove this content and add decent content above the fold with relevant long tail keywords in (it is currently decent but could do with expanding if we are removing this large chunk of text in theSEO box and some long tail keywords will be missing if we just remove it) we can add a couple of links into this new content but will struggle to list the category pages not on the left hand navigation. If we were to list all of the pages in the left hand nav would we dilute the power going to the main pages currently or would we be in the same position we are now? For example at the minute I would say the power is mainly going to the left hand nav links and then a small amount of power to the links in the SEO content if we put these into the nav will it not dilute the power to the main pages. Thank you for your time and hopefully your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Content Landing Page
Hey Mozzers, I wanted to get some opinions on here. I'm going to be building out the content on my site a lot of the next couple of months, and have recently started thinking about creating a content landing page. For those not familiar with the concept it's the idea of building this page that basically just pulls together all the content you've written on a specific subject & serves as hopefully a link magnet & destination for people interested in the topic. So my question is this, I am just outlining all of the different posts & areas that I want to cover on specific topics & it is a lot. I'm talking ~20 posts on each subject. Do you think that would be too much content to try & get on one page? Should I break it down to a more finite 5-7 links to high quality articles per page, or create basically this monster guide that links to all these different articles I'll create. Looking forward to getting your opinion, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chris.kent0 -
Dynamic SEO resources
Hi everyone, Could any of you recommend a good resource to learn about dynamic SEO? Thanks very much, Diana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Duplicate page Content
There has been over 300 pages on our clients site with duplicate page content. Before we embark on a programming solution to this with canonical tags, our developers are requesting the list of originating sites/links/sources for these odd URLs. How can we find a list of the originating URLs? If you we can provide a list of originating sources, that would be helpful. For example, our the following pages are showing (as a sample) as duplicate content: www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=11 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=12 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=15 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=2 "How did you get all those duplicate urls? I have tried to google the "contact us", "news", "video" pages. I didn't get all those duplicate pages. The page id=87 on the most of the duplicate pages are not supposed to be there. I was wondering how the visitors got to all those duplicate pages. Please advise." Note, the CMS does not create this type of hybrid URLs. We are as curious as you as to where/why/how these are being created. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlemieux0