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.
Does collapsing content impact Google SEO signals?
-
Recently I have been promoting custom long form content development for major brand clients. For UX reasons we collapse the content so only 2-3 sentences of the first paragraph are visible. However there is a "read more" link that expands the entire content piece.
I have believed that the searchbots would have no problem crawling, indexing and applying a positive SEO signal for this content. However I'm starting to wonder. Is there any evidence that the Google search algorithm could possible discount or even ignore collapsed content? -
Thanks EGOL. Still looking for additional evidence about this.
-
well.. yup. I know many SEOs that do think that the collapsable are is just not important enough for google to consider it
good luck
-
If I see a study, I'll post a link here.
-
Yep I completely agree with your response. Unfortunately I'm in a position where I manage major enterprise accounts with multiple stakeholders (including some people are not educated in SEO). Every major change we propose needs to be documented, cited and reviewed. When making an argument for content expansion I would need to use thorough research example (Moz study, documentation on search engine land, etc).
Anyway thank for taking the time to share your feedback and advice on this thread. Although this is not the answer I wanted to hear (i.e. Google doesn't respect collapsed content)...however it's very likely accurate. This is a serious SEO issue that needs to be addressed.
-
Are there any case studies about this issue?
Just the one that I published above. The conclusion is... be prepared to sacrifice 80% of your traffic if you hide your valuable content behind a preview.
I would be asking the UX people to furnish studies that hiding content produces better sales.
We have lots of people raving about the abundance of content on our site, the detailed product descriptions, how much help we give them to decide what to purchase. All of this content is why we dominate the SERPs in our niche and that, in many people's eyes, is a sign of credibility. Lots of people say... "we bought from you because your website is so helpful". However, if we didn't have all of this content in the open these same people would have never even found us.
Nobody has to read this stuff. I would rather land on a website and see my options than land on a website and assume that they was no information because I didn't notice that the links to open it were in faded microfont because the UX guys wanted things to be tidy. I believe that it is a bigger sin to have fantastic content behind a clickthorugh than it is to put valuable information in the open and allow people to have the opportunity to read it.
Putting our content out in the open is what makes our reputation.
I sure am glad that I am the boss here. I can make the decisions and be paid on the basis of my performance.
-
We are applying 500 to 800+ word custom content blocks for our client landing pages (local landing pages) that shows a preview of the first paragraph and a "read more" expansion link. We know that most website visitors only care about the location info of these particular landing pages. We also know that our client UX teams would certainly not approve an entire visible content block on these pages.
Are there any case studies about this issue? I'm trying to find a bona fide research project to help back up our argument. -
It was similar to a Q&A. There was a single sentence question and a paragraph of hidden answer. This page had a LOT of questions and a tremendous amount of keywords in the hidden content. Thousands of words.
The long tail traffic tanked. Then, when we opened the content again the traffic took months to start coming back. The main keywords held in the SERPs. The longtail accounted for the 80% loss.
-
How collapsed was your content? Did you hide the entire block? Only show a few sentences? I'm trying to find a research article about this. This is a MAJOR issue to consider for our SEO campaigns.
-
Yes that is a very legitimate concern of mine. We have invested significant resources into custom long form content for our clients and we are very concerned this all for nothing...or possibly worse (discounting content).
-
Recently i a had related issue with a top ranking website for very competitive queries.
Unfortunately the product department made some changes to the content (UI only) without consulting SEO department. The only worth to mention change they made was to move the first two paragraphs into a collapsible DIV showing only the first 3 lines + a "read more" button. The text in collapsible div was crawlable and visible to SE's. (also it's worth to mention that these paragrap
But the site lost its major keywords positions 2-3 days later.Of-course we reverted the changes back but still two months later, the keywords are very slowly moving back to their "original" positions.
For years i believed in what Google stated, that you can use collapsible content if you are not trying to inject keywords or trying to inflate the amount of content etc. Not anymore.
I believe that placing the content under a collapsible div element, we are actually signaling google that this piece of content is not that important (that's why it is hidden, right? Otherwise it should be in plain sight). So why we should expect from google to take this content as a major part of our contents ranking factor weight.
-
About two years ago I had collapsed content on some important pages. Their longtail traffic went into a steady slide, but the head traffic held. I attribute this to a sign that the collapsed content was discounted, removing it from, or lowering its ability to count in the rankings for long tail queries.
I expanded the page, making all content visible. A few months later, longtail traffic started to slowly rise. It took many months to climb back to previous levels.
After this, every word of my content is now in the open.
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
-
Content Below the Fold
Hi I wondered what the view is on content below the fold? We have the H1, product listings & then some written content under the products - will Google just ignore this? I can't hide it under a tab or put a lot of content above products - so I'm not sure what the other option is? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
SEO Impact of External links in JS tag
We have our JS tag and iframe tag being used over by 100 leading websites. What would be the SEO impact if we added a follow link in the iframe. Would it have any negative impact ? Vivek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kvivek050 -
Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question
Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
SEO Impact of High Volume Vertical and Horizontal Internal Linking
Hello Everyone - I maintain a site with over a million distinct pages of content. Each piece of content can be thought of like a node in graph database or an entity. While there is a bit of natural hierarchy, every single entity can be related to one or more other entities. The conceptual structure of the entities like so: Agency - A top level business unit ( ~100 pages/urls) Office - A lower level business unit, part of an Agency ( ~5,000 pages/urls) Person - Someone who works in one or more Offices ( ~80,000 pages/urls) Project - A thing one or more People is managing ( ~750,000 pages/urls) Vendor - A company that is working on one or more Projects ( ~250,000 pages/urls) Category - A descriptive entity, defining one or more Projects ( ~1,000 pages/urls) Each of these six entities has a unique (url) and content. For each page/url, there are internal links to each of the related entity pages. For example, if a user is looking at a Project page/url, there will be an internal link to one or more Agencies, Offices, People, Vendors, and Categories. Also, a Project will have links to similar Projects. This same theory holds true for all other entities as well. People pages link to their related Agencies, Offices, Projects, Vendors, etc, etc. If you start to do the math, there are tons of internal links leading to pages with tons of internal links leading to pages with tons of internal links. While our users enjoy the ability to navigate this world according to these relationships, I am curious if we should force a more strict hierarchy for SEO purposes. Essentially, does it make sense to "nofollow" all of the horizontal internal links for a given entity page/url? For search engine indexing purposes, we have legit sitemaps that give a simple vertical hierarchy...but I am curious if all of this internal linking should be hidden via nofollow...? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhariani2 -
Google crawling different content--ever ok?
Here are a couple of scenarios I'm encountering where Google will crawl different content than my users on initial visit to the site--and which I think should be ok. Of course, it is normally NOT ok, I'm here to find out if Google is flexible enough to allow these situations: 1. My mobile friendly site has users select a city, and then it displays the location options div which includes an explanation for why they may want to have the program use their gps location. The user must choose the gps, the entire city, or he can enter a zip code, or choose a suburb of the city, which then goes to the link chosen. OTOH it is programmed so that if it is a Google bot it doesn't get just a meaningless 'choose further' page, but rather the crawler sees the page of results for the entire city (as you would expect from the url), So basically the program defaults for the entire city results for google bot, but for for the user it first gives him the initial ability to choose gps. 2. A user comes to mysite.com/gps-loc/city/results The site, seeing the literal words 'gps-loc' in the url goes out and fetches the gps for his location and returns results dependent on his location. If Googlebot comes to that url then there is no way the program will return the same results because the program wouldn't be able to get the same long latitude as that user. So, what do you think? Are these scenarios a concern for getting penalized by Google? Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0