Hiding body copy with a 'read more' button
-
Hi
Whats the consequences of hiding half of the lovingly crafted body copy/written content (good quality modern version of what we used to call seo text) i have written for a clients main site sections and then having a 'read more' button to reveal ?
I have written 500+ words for each page but client wants to reduce word count displayed since thinks looks too 'wordy'!
I know that this is possible and used to be fine if done in a manner that was still crawlable, is this still the case ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dana
i did tell the devs to do as you recommended (CSS divs etc) but they just replied saying they did it through javascript instead, but should be ok since on page load the text is defaulting to show. Do you think that would be ok or inadvisable to use java at all as i have also heard elsewhere ? (there has been a drop in rankings since they did this so i'm thinking not ?
All Best
Dan
-
really !? i see it as other way round. SEO text short an kw stuffed and currently long 3-400+ highly descriptive and good quality content copy that includes kw simply by virtue of the being descriptive and useful
-
Old fashioned SEO text would be loads of copy per page. A short paragraph explaining things for the user should be sufficient in most cases.
-
i thought pages needed loads of good copy 500+ words ideally ? instead of old fashioned seo text
-
Probably won't hurt, but won't help either. Could be seen as spammy if you ever had a manual reviewer from Google go over your site. 500+ words per page is overkill.
-
You are welcome Dan!
-
many thanks Dana
-
Hi Dan,
Yes, if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable
tags it's totally fine. It's understandable why from a design standpoint it might be much more attractive to have a page with less words on it. Justin Taylor (@justingraphitas) actually did a bang-up job in a Mozinar on designing for SEO that discusses this exact topic: http://moz.com/webinars/designing-for-seo
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
What is the best way to deal with creating a separate brand with it's own website when the main site already ranks well for the target keywords?
A client currently has a site that ranks well for a number of queries. They recently created a new site for a spin-off brand/company that they now want to focus on ranking for some of the keywords their original site already ranked for. What would be the best way to go about this without throwing away the existing authority and traffic the original site has for those queries?
On-Page Optimization | | P1WS_Sully0 -
Putting review aggregation in product's navigation
Do you guys think it's a bad idea to put a review aggregation page in a product's navigation? Such as: "Which Brand of Men's Shampoo Is Best for You?" Rand suggests against it in this Whiteboard Friday as it interferes with a product's funnel, but I wonder if including it in navigation will give a domain and that page increased authority for a head keyword, such as "men's shampoo." What do you guys think?
On-Page Optimization | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Wordpress 'Hide Title' Feature, does this help shorten title length
Im wondering if anyone with some Wordpress experience can help me. I am using Yoast to create my page titles, but yet Moz tells me that my page titles including my actual page title tag which is 'dumfries wedding photography | Hemera Visuals' by clicking on the 'hide title' feature in wordpress will this in turn stop wordpress from automatically adding my page title and therfor bring my title length down drastically? And if so will I have to wait till google next crawls my page to see if this works? Kind Regards Cameron.
On-Page Optimization | | hemeravisuals120 -
Moz Crawl Shows Duplicate Content Which Doesn't Seem To Appear In Google?
Morning All, First post, be gentle! So I had Moz crawl our website with 2500 high priority issues of duplicate content, not good. However if I just do a simple site:www.myurl.com in Google, I cannot see these duplicate pages....very odd. Here is an example....
On-Page Optimization | | scottiedog
http://goo.gl/GXTE0I
http://goo.gl/dcAqdU So the same page has a different URL, Moz brings this up as an issue, I would agree with that. However if I google both URL's in Google, they will both bring up the same page but with the original URL of http://goo.gl/zDzI7j ...in other words, two different URL's bring up the same indexed page in Google....weird I thought about using a wildcard in the robots.txt to disallow these duplicate pages with poor URL's....something like.... Disallow: /*display.php?product_id However, I read various posts that it might not help our issues? Don't want to make things worse. On another note, my colleague paid for a "SEO service" and they just dumped 1000's of back-links to our website, of course that's come back to bite us in the behind. Anyone have any recommendations for a good service to remove these back-links? Thanks in advance!!0 -
Hiding body copy with a 'read more' drop down option
Hi I just want to confirm how potentially damaging using java script to hide lots of on page body copy with a 'read more' button is ? As per other moz Q&A threads i was told that best not to use Javascript to do this & instead "if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable <DIV> tags it's totally fine" so thats what i advised my clients dev. However i recently noticed a big drop in rankings aprox 1 weeks after dev changing the body copy format (hiding alot of it behind a 'read more' button) so i asked them to confirm how they did implement it and they said: "done in javascript but on page load the text is defaulting to show" (which is contrary to my instructions) So how likely is it that this is causing problems ? since coincides with ranking drop OR if text is defaulting to show it should be ok/not cause probs ? And should i request that they redo as originally instructed (css & collapsible divs) asap ? All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How can you activate the 'Results From' internal search bar on Google SERP?
Hi There, I am hoping someone can advise me on getting the 'Results From' sitelink to display for my site on the Google SERP? I have searched far and wide for the answer with no luck. I'd really appreciate your advice. Thanks! Internal_Search_Google_SERP_zps75a5383e.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | tmg.seo0 -
Is my blog simply duplicate content of my authors' profiles?
www.example.com/blog is the full list of blog posts by various writers. The list contains the title of each article and the first paragraph from the article. In addition to /blog being indexed, each author's contribution list is being indexed separately. It's not a profile, really, just a list of articles in the same title & paragraph format of the /blog page. So if /blog a list of 10 articles written by two writers, I have three pages: /blog/author1 is a list of 4 articles /blog/author2 is a list of 6 different articles /blog is a list of 10 articles (the 4+6 from the two writers) Is this going to be considered duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
How can I stop google reading a certain section of text with my H1 tag?
Hey Mozzers, I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way that I can stop google reading a certain part of text within my H1 texts? My issue is that I have individual office pages on my site, but many offices are based in the same city; such as 'London'. I want to keep London within the H1 tag for user experience but I do not want it to be picked up by the search engines and start a canonical issue. I've seen some people say to use document.write or use an image. Does anybody know of a correct way of doing this? Many Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Lakeside0