How can I provide titles and descriptive text for our list of USPs on the same page optimized both for usability and SEO
-
I am rebuilding our website together with an agency and I am stuck with the following problem:
We have a page which will provide the visitor with a quick and convincing impression why he should chose our enterprise. On this page we want to show our USPs (Unique Selling Points) each with a title and a short description. Now my preferred way of presenting those USPs would be of a list of the titles (which permits to see all USPs without having to read a lot of text) where each title can be clicked to expand the description (in case you want to know more about this specific USP) and if you click on another title the previously clicked title description will collapse and the new description expand and so on (similar to this page: http://www.berlin-city-immobilien.de/38.html - I'm talking about the list in the middle of the page starting with the headline "Dabei profitieren Sie von folgenden Vorteilen"). Since I also want to use these descriptions as on page SEO-texts I checked whether Google might not index or at least value "click to expand content" less than plain text in the body of the page and I stumbled over this article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html. According to this article Google will definitely discount the descriptions on my page.
Does anyone have an idea how to solve this problem? Either by suggesting a different way to show titles and descriptions on the page or maybe by suggesting a workaround so Google will not treat the descriptions as "click to expand text".
Thank you already in advance for your input.
Ben -
First of all thank you both for taking the time to answer my question.
@Russ
I also was hesitating whether I could display the text first and then collapse it with some JS but I also read somewhere that Google is or will be analyzing JS in the future and of course this could lead to a penalty if not now than somewhere in the future. So I think I will follow your advice to stick with your first suggestion.
As to your first suggestion: In this case the user has to click more so this is a slight limitation when it comes to usability but I guess to some extend I have to accept a compromise. Do you think it is a problem if content (in that case headline and teaser) is repeated on the same page?
@ Dimitrii
Well what Matt is saying is that they won't count it as some spam and penalize the website. But he does not say anything about how the click to expand content is weighted.
The solution with the different pages will not work in my case as I need all descriptions on one page for SEO and it is also a slight limitation to usability as the user has to keep on switching between the pages.
-
Hi there.
Well, in the same article you are referring to, is this text:
Amazon use to use a lot of tabs but now they seem to output most of the content directly on the page, making the user scroll and scroll to see the content. _Google's own help documents does use click to expand but only to see the questions. _
Also there was this video from Matt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpK1VGJN4XY
I understand that a lot of this content contradicts each other etc, but I'd look at this problem like this: it's not a secret at all that Google puts (or at least states that they put) User Experience first. So, Look at your page and see if users, after they land on it, would be happy. If everything makes sense from User point of view. If "expand" buttons are large enough and portrait that by clicking on them you'd expand content etc.
Also, as Matt said, is there 8 pages of content hidden and being displayed after you click "expand" and ruining your day?
I believe that as long as it looks good, makes sense to user and is good content, there shouldn't be any problems. The only workaround i see is instead of expandable content, to have simply links to other pages. I've seen both scenarios work.
Hope this helps.
-
This is a question that is getting a lot more attention lately. You have two choices...
1. Accept the reality that Google doesn't want to rank you for content that is hidden...
In this case, I would recommend starting with the list of your USPs at the top, maybe each with 1 sentence below explaining (like a headline and a tagline). Below that, repeat the headlines but each with a much longer description of text. Make the first listings links to the anchored headlines below, so if you click on the 1st USP, you are taken to the full description of it below. Then use a "return to top" anchor to bring you back to the list. This would allow you to get your USPs front-and-center and still get the content on the page.2. Or try and get around it.
Start with the content showing and then hide it with some JS event like a scroll, mouseover, timed event, etc.In the end, I would recommend finding a way to accomplish #1 so you don't worry about losing ill-gotten gains by tricking Google.
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
-
Our protected pages 302 redirect to a login page if not a member. Is that a problem for SEO?
We have a membership site that has links out in our unprotected pages. If a non-member clicks on these links it sends a 302 redirect to the login / join page. Is this an issue for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | rimix1 -
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
We have duplicate page titles on the footer menu section of our site. Is this considered spammy?
When our new site was in development stages our digital agency convinced me that we should have duplicate menu links in the footer section of the site. The general justification being that the menu links are key word relevant. I have received opposing opinion from SEO advisers indicating that these duplicate menu links could be considered 'spammy'. I would appreciate some views on this please
Technical SEO | | saints0 -
How To SEO Mobile Pages?
hello, I have finally put my first foot on the path of trying to learn and understand mobile SEO. I have a few questions regarding mobile SEO and how it works, so please help me out. I use wordpress for my site, and there is a nifty plugin called WP touch http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/ What it basically does is, it converts your desktop version into a mobile friendly version. I wanted to know that if it does that, does this mean whatever SEO i do for my regular web site gets accomplished for my moible version as well? Another simple question is, if i search for the same term on my mobile phone then on my desktop how different will the SERs be? thanks moz peeps
Technical SEO | | david3050 -
Link title with anchor text
Will there be any additional SEO value if we add link title in addition to anchor text.? Can you compare link title with image title? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | gmk15670 -
If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?
Technical SEO | | JordanJudson0 -
Importance of an optimized home page (index)
I'm helping a client redesign their website and they want to have a home page that's primarily graphics and/or flash (or jquery). If they are able to optimize all of their key sub-pages, what is the harm in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340 -
When to SEO optimize a blog post?
Hi there, Here's our situation: there are two people working on the blog. person 1) writes the posts person 2) SEO optimizes the posts I know this is not ideal but it's the best we can do and it's a whole lot better than no blog. 🙂 I'm the fellow optimizing the posts. I've found that my best SEO efforts usually slightly undermine the readability of these posts -- not in an extreme way, I'm not going overboard with keywords or anything. Rather, things like a sexy & enticing article heading may have to be dummed down for search engines... Because of this dumming down, I like to wait a couple of weeks to SEO optimize our posts, the logic being that we get the best of both worlds: a happy regular readership on topic articles that are clearly described for (and aligned to the terms used by) our search engine visitors What I'm wondering is, Generally: can you see any problems with this setup? would you do it differently? Specifically: does Google (et al) punish this sort of backwards re-writing? and, does it somehow amount to less SEO mojo when done retroactively? Thanks so much for your time! Best, Jon
Technical SEO | | JonAmar0