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.
Lightboxes and SEO
-
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
-
Thanks very much, Mike!
-
Hi Chris,
It's not entirely clear how this will impact SEO, but there is some indication hidden content could be weighted lower by Google.
Google has said in the past that such hidden content will not be weighted equally to visible content. In the early part of this blog post there's a helpful summary of Google engineering statements on this issue: https://www.freshegg.co.uk/blog/technical-seo/google/how-does-google-treat-hidden-content
It's at least somewhat likely that content contained in lightboxes will be weighted less than visible content. So while I'm not certain there is a downside, there could be and it's worth consideration for your new site design. There wouldn't be any kind of "penalty" for pages containing hidden content, but rankings for keywords/language contained in that content could be lower than they otherwise would be if the content were visible by default (without user interaction). I'd recommend planning for that.
Best,
Mike
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
-
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Intro to programming/coding for seo
Hello, I am currently a SEO and am looking for an Intro to programming/coding course to help me implement various technical SEO tasks for my clients and the business-as the programming dept will not help me, as they do not see the value of SEO. Could someone pls recommend an online course that would introduce me to basic concepts and also specifically, the information that would help me to enhance our SEO? I would also like to better understand APIs. Thanks so much in advance for your help! Lauren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
If you have an unlimited SEO budget, what would you do?
Here's a bit of background information: I've achieved the targets and is now being offered what is essentially an unlimited budget. I have a nice list of ideas but thought I would the brilliant people here at the SEOMOZ community what they would do. So as to promote as much response as possible, I'm going to keep my list to myself for now. And by "SEO", I mean I can do things like content strategy, blogging, infographics, etc. Shoot away!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0 -
Web fonts & SEO
Hi everyone ! My question is regarding web fonts. We are currently working on a new design for our website and we're thinking about using web fonts instead of images containing the fonts we'd like to have. I'd like to know if web fonts can affect SEO as they need to be downloaded on the visitor's computers and consequently can slow down the load time of our web pages. If anyone has used web fonts in the past, do you have some specific tips to share ? Thank you in advance for your answers! Jeremie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0 -
Do widgets and gadgets affect SEO?
I have added a number of widgets and gadgets to my site that I suspect act like Iframes. If true do these widgets and gadgets and the content that they are linked to help or hurt my site from an SEO perspective? Examples are facebook gadget, wordpress blidget, weather gadget, google maps widget.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Does Blocking ICMP Requests Affect SEO?
All in the title really. One of our clients came up with errors with a server header check, so I pinged them and it times out. The hosting company have told them that it's because they're blocking ICMP requests and this doesn't affect SEO at all... but I know that sometimes pinging posts, etc... can be beneficial so is this correct? Thanks, Steve.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0
