Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
-
Hi everyone,
I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text.
Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/
H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris
I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues.
Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks!
Tom
-
Hello Tom,
Five or six years ago this may have been a problem, but I seriously doubt it is right now. The text is clearly visible to humans and bots and you are not doing anything malicious. The div with the text appears over the image and it views fine in text and full mode when looking at Google's cache of the page.
Though both Pedram and Donford have answered your initial question well, I could not officially "endorse" them because I don't advocate keyword density ranges and do not agree that a manual review of the site would result in you being subject to any kind of penalty.
Write naturally for the topic at hand, focusing content on the correct keywords and topics with the goal of being helpful to the reader. Don't worry about manual checks for this because it will be obvious to the person looking at the site that nothing fishy is going on.
Good luck!
-
Hi Thomas,
The last I heard Google / Bing / MSN /Yahoo has no automatic way to know if you were obfuscating text. The way sites are built now, layers on layers or divs inside divs it would pretty difficult to decipher all the code to just check if there is hidden text. However, if a competitor catches you doing it, reports it, and then the Search Engines do a manual check you're likely going to get dinged.
I haven't seen anything new on this subject in a year or more but looking at your site I don't think this is your problem. In fact our corporate site uses white text on an image on every single page and we have no issues.
-
I doubt it. The titles aren't hidden at all. It looks good as you said, but it's not purposefully hidden at all.
As you said, there are many reasons as to why you're seeing dropped listings. You're targeting competitive keywords. Perhaps you should try to run a link audit on different websites on page 1 for your targeted terms and see what's going on with your competitors. Maybe they have a better (or worse) linking strategy or social share strategy than you?
Have you done a keyword density check on your site? Try to keep keyword density to around 1-3% (that's what's worked for us in the past).
Of course there are also the fundamentals: make sure you have keywords in all the right places (which it seems that you do - maybe consider putting keywords in the URL).
Hope this helps.
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
-
Specifying image dimensions for site speed vs. responsive
I'm working on improving site speed from an SEO perspective, and one bit of advice I see often is to specify the dimensions of the images you're using so the browser knows the size of the image it needs to download. However, I am wondering what impact this may have if the site is responsive? If you specify the large dimensions suited for a desktop browser, would you be forcing a mobile browser to use that sized image? Has anyone seen dramatic improvements in site speed using the <picture>tag for responsive images?</picture> Thanks! Jannette
Web Design | | JannetteP1 -
New To SEO Management, I just want to double check that my idea will work.
I am new to SEO management. I had a 3 month SEO copy writing internship and a 5 month SEO temp job. In both I mostly wrote copy, but I've been teaching myself SEO on the side, I became Google certified. I ended up getting a telemarketing job and somehow the conversation of SEO came up and I winded up managing their SEO for 12 dollars an hour. They say that every lead generated from the website that turns into a sale will be worth 10 dollars and if and when the sales exceed my paycheck I will starting making commission so long as it stays above my hourly. SEO is very fun and this is like my dream job. They are leaving the planning 100% up to me and I want to make sure that what I am doing will work. My plan is as follows: Part 1: Page Authority via backlinks and social media We are health care brokers and my boss, the owner has a lot of contact. He is talking with large unions like, "The Teamsters," and large company retirment groups like, "Blue flame," which is apparently in some way connected to DTE or GE. Long story short, I am trying to get him to convince them to give us a back link to our main page. He also has a ton of clients that own companies. This is good because they may be persuaded to give us backlinks too. In addition, the tech guy thinks he can implement something where we can get a google +1, facebooks likes/shares, twitter likes and shares and pintrest pin it's that would be a part of an email that we send to people within the list of 12,000 clients. From what I can see, from the client base and the people we are working with we should be able to raise the page authority substantially despite the fact that the site is only a few months old and is not yet out of the sand box. I have been slowly picking off each error with SEO MOZ's website crawling. Part 2: Making a Insurance Jargon Dictionary Guide For The Tri-purpose of gathering traffic, proving our professionalism and helping people understand semi-complex insurance jargon. I could build these 2-3 keywords would be addressed per page and they would be defined in a way to help people looking for terms understand them, while simultaneously netting a strong keyword density and a strong page. I think as far as I can tell there are no issues. Part 3: The dictionary pages will pull in new traffic and the home page will receive links and distribute link juice to the sub-pages. This subpages will guide traffic back to the main page with no-follow links to direct people from the unique termed landing pages to the home page for insurance processing. As far as I can tell my logic is solid and on paper this should work. Am I missing anything (like key details, flaws in my plan)?
Web Design | | Tediscool0 -
Can someone please help with technical question!
I have noticed that our website tool to get a quote does not work with active scripting disabled is this bad? How many people have this disabled?
Web Design | | BobAnderson0 -
Finding a good wordpress web developer for SEO fixes
I have gotten a good audit done of my site now it is time to get the fixes done. I have a developer I worked with for a long time that is good at coding and fixes on my site. However I am not confident in his abilities to execute some of the seo changes that need to be done. Their are some common stuff he can tackle but when it comes to GWT and proper handling of 404's and 301's and other seo tasks I am not sure if he is the right choice.Maybe due to a lack of experience of dealing with the issues I have or is just not his specialty or web devs just don't know seo...lol.... Is obvious a lot of SEO's don't make the changes themselves but leave it up to the devs to handle it their suggestions and fixes. But from my experience devs are not so well versed in seo and you have a hard time knowing if they are doing it correct or can even do it.(of course they will say they can they want your cash and i understand that ). In particular a good amount of wordpress devs claim to know seo but i find that far from the truth.Even when guided to issues some of them will often leave you disappointed. Sorry for my rant! Now to my question , obviously not many SEO's make the actual code changes themselves (how i wish i knew a one that did) are their ones out their that do? If not how do i find a good wordpress dev that can make proper seo changes and knows his stuff....example i need someone who can trouble shoot and track down some serious GWT I have and deal with some hardcore 404 & 301 issues . A lot claim to know but when push comes to shove I have been left disappointed. Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions or recommendations.
Web Design | | chrisyak0 -
Anyone used bugherd.com for onsite seo purposes?
Just as the title says, has anyone used bugherd.com for SEO purposes? I was thinking it could be used to show client changes that need to be made regarding the website. Example could be if you are looking at a CRO prospective, you may want to change/add some graphics or text to improve conversions. It seems like a nifty tool to show the changes you want made and to keep track of them. It integrates with basecamp also 🙂
Web Design | | KyleChamp0 -
What are the SEO best practices for infinite scrolling?
Is infinite scrolling bad for SEO? Is there a way to implement infinite scrolling without hurting a site's SEO?
Web Design | | BostonWright0 -
Flash and SEO
When I search the seomoz site for "flash and seo" I only see older articles, 2008. Is there anything newer you can point me to for a current discussion on the impact on SEO of flash sites?
Web Design | | panderson3210 -
SEO to Drive Leads
Dear friends, I have clients asking for SEO to drive leads. I have no experience on it, how could I do that? Is there any web layout I can suggest to my client? Another question is how do I implemented the layout on the web structure? I usually structuring my website based on keywords. For example: Homepage niche: plumbing Category: london plumbing, plumbing service, etc Content: Finding London plumbing service in your area, what kind of plumbing service you should pay attention? So, based on these layout, my SEO efforts goes to the content, instead of the homepage. Now, the question is how do I increase conversion with these strategy? Is placing a form above the fold would be wise, then place the content below it. Please advice 🙂 Thanks for your kind support, Albertus
Web Design | | toeplly0