Rollover design & SEO
-
After reading this article http://www.seomoz.org/blog/designing-for-seo some questions came up from my developers.
In the article it says
"One potential solution to this problem is a mouse-over. Initially when viewed, the panel will look as it does on the left hand side (exactly as the designer want it), yet when a user rolls over the image the panel changes into what you see on the right hand side (exactly what the SEO wants)."
My developers say" Having text in the rollovers is almost like hiding text and everyone knows in SEO that you should never hide text. "In the article he explains that it is not hidden text since its visible & readable by the engines.What are everyone's thoughts on this? Completely acceptable or iffy?Thanks
-
I wanted to expand on what I said earlier as I feel I may have missed the nuance of the question. If the purpose of the rollover text is to enhance the user experience, then in that sense it not only is good for user but also 100% safe from an SEO perspective. Examples; tabbed content (product reviews, specs, manufacturer info ect.), or expanding images and displaying some captions. The purpose of these sorts of things are to specifically add to the user experience and give them as much information as possible.
My first response I focused on more of what was said then what was meant. My original post still stands if the purpose of the rollover text is specifically designed only to make search engines rank you higher.
-
Hi Samantha,
I really like the way your developers think. It is very very important that as developers they are thinking with SEO in mind. I personally don't think there is much if any risk if implemented in way that is not underhanded, that is because search engines are not yet at the point of being able to compare "visible" vs "invisible" text. That being said, the point of putting the text in rollovers is specifically for search engines and not a sanctioned tag, it is then in essence, trying to trick the search engine to ranking you higher. By sanctioned tags, I mean things like h1, h2, alt text, metas etc... that is an important distinction because those tags are there to help the search engines and recognized as such, anything that deviates from that distinction that purposely tries to lead a search engine is black hat.
In summary, I agree with your developers kudos.
-
Hey Samantha, having text in rollovers should not be an issue unless you are deliberately being spammy or trying to trick Google about what your page is about.
Modern web design incorporates many design elements that are hidden until the user interacts with them, such as: drop down menus, sliders, contextual help, slideshows, etc. Google understands that these are legitimate ways of presenting content to users, and not a blackhat tactic to spam keywords.
There's always the chance that hiding text could inadvertently trip Google's spam filters, but many of the most popular websites incorporate these design features, and the risk should be minimal.
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
-
Want to remove a large amount of links from spam sites. SEO company says we will lose a lot of link juice?
Hi, We have a lot of links that have a spam score above 30% and 60%. I don't know if someone has spammed our website. However our SEO company has said we should remove these carefully over a period of 3 months while they add new good links. I don't quite trust this advice. Are they trying to get more business?? They have put doubt in our mind. Can anyone please shed any light on this?? Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | YvonneDupree0 -
Which is Important? Backlinks or Internal Links? For SEO purpose.
Which is Important? Backlinks or Internal Links? For SEO purpose.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BBT-Digital0 -
SEO - All topic related pages in same directory?
Hey Mozzers, How would you structure the following pages for SEO. The site is a multi-product / multi-topic site, but all pages in this example are based on a single topic - CRM Software: CRM Software product CRM Software related blog post 1 CRM Software related blog post 2 CRM Software related blog post 3 CRM Software downloadable resource 1 CRM Software downloadable resource 2 CRM Software downloadable resource 3 I know building directory pyramids is a bit old hat nowadays, but I still see the odd website organising the above pages, as follows: /crm-software /crm-software/crm-blog-post-1 /crm-software/crm-blog-post-2 /crm-software/crm-blog-post-3 /crm-software/crm-resource-1 /crm-software/crm-resource-2 /crm-software/crm-resource-3 However, I'm more inclined to apply a more logical structure, as follows: /crm-software /blog/crm-blog-post-1 /blog/crm-blog-post-2 /blog/crm-blog-post-3 /resources/crm-resource-1 /resources/crm-resource-2 /resources/crm-resource-3 What would you say is SEO best practice? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Zoope0 -
How to make second site in same niche and do white hat SEO
Hello, As much as we would like, there's a possibility that our site will never recover from it's Google penalties. Our team has decided to launch a new site in the same niche. What do we need to do so that Google will not mind us having 2 sites in the same niche? (Menu differences, coding differences, content differences, etc.) We won't have duplicate content, but it's hard to make the sites not similar. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
What sources do you use to keep on top of SEO news?
I want to try building an RSS feed of SEO news... but not wanting to find myself drowning in materials As such, looking for a short list of recommendations for keeping on top of SEO developments – the impetus is that I'm still discovering changes that happened 2, 3, even 5 years ago, and I want to try and catch these things as they happen. Thinking something actually from Google may be on the list, but some of these sources are pretty on top of things! Seroundtable.com also comes to mind. But what do you use to keep informed? Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ntcma1 -
Image Optimization & Duplicate Content Issues
Hello Everyone, I have a new site that we're building which will incorporate some product thumbnail images cut and pasted from other sites and I would like some advice on how to properly manage those images on our site. Here's one sample scenario from the new website: We're building furniture and the client has the option of selecting 50 plastic laminate finish options from the Formica company. We'll cut and paste those 50 thumbnails of the various plastic laminate finishes and incorporate them into our site. Rather than sending our website visitors over to the Formica site, we want them to stay put on our site, and select the finishes from our pages. The borrowed thumbnail images will not represent the majority of the site's content and we have plenty of our own images and original content. As it does not make sense for us to order 50 samples from Formica & photograph them ourselves, what is the best way to handle to issue? Thanks in advance, Scott
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ccbamatx0 -
SEO for location outside major city
Hello, I'm hoping to get some opinions on optimising a site for a client based 30 minutes outside of Dublin. Obviously there is a higher search volume for "x in Dublin" than "x in small town". What do you think the best strategies are for incorporating the "Dublin" into keywords? For example is it OK to use phrases like "x near Dublin" or "x in Greater Dublin", or do you think this is a bit misleading? The client in question sells good online, so the customer wouldn't physically have to visit the store. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gcdtechnologies0 -
DropBox.com High PA & DA?
"What’s up with these dl.dropbox.com High PA & DA links?" You know, It's frustrating to spend almost an entire day getting a few great link backs... then to find out your competitor has hundreds of cheap & easy link backs for the keyword you are going for with greater Authority [according to SEOmoz's OSE]. So I ran a search on one of our top competitors in Open Site Explorer to gather an idea of where the heck they are getting all of their links. Please feel free to copy my actions so you can see what I see. Run a search in OSE for www[dot]webstaurantstore[dot]com. Click on the ‘Anchor Text’ Tab. Click on the first Anchor Text Term, which should be ‘restaurant supplies’ :: Then it will expand, click on the ‘View more links and details in the inbound links section.’ As you scroll down the list you will notice that they have a bunch of linking pages from dl.dropbox.com, all of them are .pdb files, for their targeted Anchor Text, restaurant supplies. Q: So my question is can someone please elaborate on what .pdb files are and how they are getting this to work for them so well? Also you will notice, on the expanded Anchor Text Page, that their 6<sup>th</sup> most powerful link for this phrase (restaurant supplies) seems to be linked straight from a porn site, I thought Google does not rank adult sites like this? Q: For future reference, does anyone know legitimate websites to maybe file an SEO manipulation complaint? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Burkett.com0