Hidden Text w/ Java Script _ Is it Bad?
-
Just came across an article that stated that Google is looking negatively at sites that attempt to hide text or use javascripts to expand text on websites. We are about to launch our new website and believe we are using this technique but im not certain if what we are doing will hurt us. Our website tends to be a little heavy on the text so used a "read more" scrpit that will expand when clicked on. Three sections that use this on the new website
Take a look and let me know your thoughts
-
That's right. If the design hides content but there's a proper button to expand it (and legible for spiders) you don't worry at all.
If you are trying to hide content on purpose, yes, might be penalized.
-
I assume you're concerned with the heading "what clients say about us?"? It certainly won't hurt you, however this text may not be indexed or ranked within Google. Since the nature of the content is testimonial related, it won't make a great difference either way. As I mentioned, Google is not penalising sites that hide content if done properly, and with good intention (not spam). They just don't take into account the hidden content when positioning a website in the SERPs.
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
-
Having a Subfolder/Subdirectory With a Different Design Than the Root Domain
Hi Everyone, I was wondering what Google thinks about having a subfolder/subdirectory with a different design than the root domain. So let's say we have MacroCorp Inc. which has been around for decades. MacroCorp has tens of thousands of backlinks and a couple thousand referring domains from quality sites in its industry and news sites. MacroCorp Inc. spins off one of its products into a new company called MicroCorp Inc., which makes CoolProduct. The new website for this company is CoolProduct.MacroCorp.com (a subdomain) which has very few backlinks and referring domains. To help MicroCorp rank better, both companies agree to place the MicroCorp content at MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/. The root domain (MacroCorp.com) links to the subfolder from its navigation and MicroCorp does the same, but the MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ subfolder has an entirely different design than the root domain. Will MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ be crawled, indexed, and rank better as both companies think it would? Or would Google still treat the subfolder like a subdomain or even a separate root domain in this case? Are there any studies, documentation, or links to good or bad examples of this practice? When LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com, for instance, what if they kept the https://www.lynda.com/ design as is and placed it at https://www.linkedin.com/learning/. Would the pre-purchase (yellow/black design) https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ rank any worse than it does now with the root domain (LinkedIn) aligned design? Thanks! Andy
Web Design | | AndyRCWRCM1 -
Anybody with a business site using Webflow CMS or another non-WordPress CMS/ sitebuilder?
If you have built your business site using Webflow CMS, kindly share your insights on how good their CMS is for SEO and how easy it is to rank a site. If you are not familiar with Webflow but have had a positive experience with another non-WordPress CMS/ sitebuilder, kindly share your opinions.
Web Design | | Blu_Ocean99.0 -
Tips on finding the right Senior Designer / Design Director
Hello Everyone, I manage a fairly large educational website that we are looking to completely redesign to improve the overall site user experience and usability. In the past I, a non-designer, business person, would just roughly draw how I thought the site should look and our developer (who is good, but not a web designer) would just try his best to make everything look profession. Over the years, it has become painfully obvious that we need to invest in more design expertise and move towards a modern, smartly designed website. So my question: Where are the best places to find good freelance designers? I have of course conducted web searches, browsed elance, and asked my network for referrals. However, I am finding that most of the really good ones, ones who have to ability to take charge and lead us through this entire process, and who have at least a basic understanding of SEO principles, work for larger integrated development shops who also expect their people to develop the new site as well. We already have a developer and are primarily looking for the design expertise. Does anyone in the Moz community have any suggestions or even referrals? Thanks! Eric
Web Design | | Eric_R0 -
Q&A DB Script For Client Questions
Our clients usually have a lot of questions about our industry. We implemented Facebook comments (see bottom of: http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/info/faq.htm) on many pages throughout the site to allow our clients to ask whatever they'd like and build additional content using copy on how our clients speak, not industry expert vocab... I have some problems with FB comments: Our answers only show to people logged into FB. For others it looks as if we don't reply. The data pulls from FB, so we don't own it and it is slower than our server. You need a Facebook, Yahoo, or Hotmail account...I want anyone to be able to ask a question. Can anyone recommend a script that accomplishes our Q&A functionality using our own database? Also, I'd like to allow anyone to post without a requirement of an account. If I had a WordPress site, I suppose this would be easier, as I'm sure there are various comment solutions, but I have a HTML\PHP based custom built site.
Web Design | | TheDude0 -
/index.php/ What is its purpose and does it hurt SEO?
Hello Moz Forum, I am still in the process of cleaning up the lack of attention to detail and betrayal set by our soon to be ex-SEO company. You can see a previous question I ask regarding betrayal SEO. I am analyzing every page on our website and i am noticing this /index.php/ in most of our URLs. We want to leave our expression engine cms and convert to wordpress. I have been reading about index.php but most of it is over my head for now. What does concern me is the "layman's" findings i am seeing through analytics. Our main domain has two URLs. one that ends in .com and the other ends in .com/index.php/ The one that ends in .com has a higher page rank than the ladder. And there are other internal pages with the same two variations. Can someone please explain to me what is /index.php/ ? what are the benefits of it? what are the cons? What will happen to my site once we move to wordpress? As always, your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | CamiloSC0 -
Question About Site Redesign and Nav / Page Structure
Hey guys, i am currently redesigning our company's site, and have come across some things that I'm not quite sure of. We used to have individual service pages in our main navigation (design, video, marketing) before the redesign. In this new design, i had the idea of making just one "services" or "capabilities" page, where these three services would each be outlined, and each service would have a list of links to more specific landing pages. Obviously, breaking it up correctly with HTML5 using the andtags. What I'm wondering is that if i'm going to be penalized for having those three services that aren't necessarily related too closely on the same page as opposed to having the one page for each service (like we have now). Any help would be greatly appreciated, and let me know if i need to elaborate more. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Looking for a Static Blog Roll (Directory) plug in / tool
I am looking to add a static page to my site to allow people to add their site to a 'master directory". I'd like to make this as SEO friendly as possible. Here's it what I would really like to be able to do. 1. Someone visits the page and can either browse the blog directory on that page, or 2. Fill out a short from that has their blog name, url, short description of their blog, their state, country, and maybe the option to upload an image as well. This way people can search by the state / country to find people near by. 3. I'd like the links to be no-follow. 4. I'm not sure if there is an easy way to do this (I think I've seen some plug in's that may be able to do it.) 5. I'm also not sure if there is anything I'm missing here that could make this better. What I don't want is just a long list of links like everyone has on their side bar. I'd like to make it better, more user friendly, more seo friendly, and more helpful than that. Any creative input on how I might do this is appreciated. Thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
How does the toolbar caclulate text to code ratio?
I am seeing some very weird text to code ratios on a competitor site (over 100%) through the Analyze feature on the SEOmoz toolbar. I'm wondering how that's calculated, and what my competitors might be doing to raise that ratio so high artificially. I need to turn in a report on this soon, any help is greatly appreciated!! EHR
Web Design | | EHR0