Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do you think using accordion text can hurt SEO?
-
I have a lot of text for my home page. My plan is to a J Query Plugin for accordion text. Does anyone think that this can hurt SEO efforts?
-
Thanks for the clarification EGOL, very useful!
For other users, here's the link to hidden text EGOL is talking about.
-
Google the hidden text.
-
Hi Janice,
I have also been wondering the same thing. Although the above replies may have been relevant in 2012, now things seem to have changed. Being from a design background accordions and tabs have always been useful for both visuals and UX, but after reading Barry Schwartz’s article my outlook has changed and a work-around is required.
To conclude the above article, Google are stating hidden content is deemed as unimportant to the user so is 'discounted' and this is something that has been done for a while. If you want your content to have a positive impact on your page ranking it's better left visible unless it's something like FAQ and/or you're not interested in optimising the content on that page. Other members of Moz may have more information on this than me.
Thanks
-
Thanks guys

-
We use accordions all of the time and it always gets indexed. Make sure to check that it's not stuck in some sort of JavaScript and you'll be fine.
-
The accordion type text are most likely indexed by Google and does not affect SEO.
The spiders don't really view pages like humans, and you can actually use Webmaster Tools to see what the spider sees(if that makes sense).
But you can also check View Source to see what is on the page, and if it shows the text it is most likely indexed and searchable by Google.
Hope that helped.
-
If you google any of the text on this FAQ page you will see that google has it indexed.
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
-
Using Bold text for keywords
Hello I am updating an old e-commerce website of mine and many keywords are in bold - shall I remove the bold tag or keep them there? This is for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
I have a site with jokes. What schema markup could I use?
My site is about jokes. I wonder what schema markup could I use to be more visible in the search results.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelJanik0 -
HTML Site SEO (NO CMS)
I have got a client site, which is dated (2007) and has not been shifted to any recognised CMS yet. It is HTML based. Is it possible to SEO on such a site? Is it even worth it? If it is possible to do SEO on this, any suggestions will be highly appreciated. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | ArthurRadtke3 -
Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?
I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content: Background: It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information. Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like: Jobs basis industry Banking Railways Clinical, etc. Jobs basis company ABC co. DEF co. XYZ co. etc. Jobs basis State / City City 1 City 2, etc. Jobs basis educational qualification Graduation Post-Graduation, etc. Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories. Thanks..
On-Page Optimization | | Shalin.TJ0 -
How to re-follow using the WPSEO plugin
Hello, I unindexed numerous blog low quality blog posts and nofollowed them at the same time using the Advanced meta tab for the Yoast WPSEO plugin. I am trying to reindex them, which I figured out and can successfully do, What I cannot figure out is these posts will not return to follow status and remain nofollow. I have been recreating the blog posts, but this is very time consuming. Is there some way to do this without have to reduplicate a new blog post? I Googled this and searched MOZ with no luck. thank you Mike
On-Page Optimization | | crazymikesapps10 -
Can I use the same text in my meta description as I put in my post excerpt?
Hi, I'm just trying to understand the right way to optimise my blog posts and this is likely a dumb question... but to what extent should the text in my meta description differ from the text in my post excerpts? cheers, Andrew
On-Page Optimization | | seowhiskey0 -
Text within a Div Crawlable?
Hi, I have a paragraph of text contained within a Div container ( ).. Is this readable by a search engine spider. Or is it better to enclose it within ? Thanks for any feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | IBMEMM0 -
Best SEO structure for blog
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0