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.
Hiding Elements on Mobile. Will this effect SEO.
-
Hey guys and gals,
I am hiding elements with @media sizes on the mobile experience for this site.
http://prepacademyschools.org/
My question is when hiding elements from mobile, will this have a negative effect on rankings for mobile and or desktop?
Right now it is a hero banner and testimonial.
My interest is because I feel responsive is now working against conversions when it comes to mobile because desktop typically has the same info several times where mobile it can be repetitive and only needed once.
Thanks,
-
Hi Judd,
If you are only hiding these elements on the mobile view, this shouldn't cause an issue from a rankings perspective. You will want to make sure that they can access your CSS file (sometimes CSS files are blocked from crawlers).
It is possible that having it hidden will mean they discount that content slightly for the mobile version, but as long as they know it's a mobile version of the desktop site they will primarily take the desktop signals into consideration when it comes to rankings (with a small boost for mobile-friendliness in the mobile SERPs).
Once the mobile-first index rolls out this will change but they have stated that with mobile-first indexing, hiding content for space reasons won't negatively impact how they weight that content, so that shouldn't affect your approach practically speaking.
-
Hi Judd,
Google will for sure notice that you are hiding elements and probably also look thoroughly into it (algorithmically) but as long as it is for the user's sake, i.e. make the user experience better on mobile and its NOT about trying to cheat (SEO wise) somehow you are pretty much on the safe side. So no problem in my opinion.
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 strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Aug 26, 2019, 9:01 PM | JimJ3 -
Hiding ad code from bots
Hi. I have a client who is about to deploy ads on their site. To avoid bots clicking on those ads and skewing data, the company would like to prevent any bots from seeing any ads and, of course, that includes Googlebot. This seems like it could be cloaking and I'd rather not have a different version of the sites for bots. However, knowing that this will likely happen, I'm wondering how big of a problem it could be if they do this. This change isn't done to manipulate Googlebot's understanding of the page (ads don't affect rankings, etc.) and it will only be a very minimal impact on the page overall. So, if they go down this road and hide ads from bots, I'm trying to determine how big of a risk this could be. I found some old articles discussing this with some suggesting it was a problem and others saying it might be okay in some cases (links below). But I couldn't find any recent articles about this. Wondering if anybody has seen anything new or has a new perspective to share on this issue? Is it a problem if all bots (including Googlebot) are unable to see ads? https://moz.com/blog/white-hat-cloaking-it-exists-its-permitted-its-useful
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Jan 17, 2019, 3:24 AM | Matthew_Edgar
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4535445.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBO-1ETf_dY0 -
Mobile SERP Thumbnail Image Control
Is there any way we can control the image that is selected next to the mobile serps? What google selects for the mobile serp thumbnail on a few of our serps is not conducive to high CTR.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Sep 12, 2017, 1:21 PM | gray_jedi1 -
Adult Toy Store SEO
Hi fellows, I'm not so strange to SEO. I have been promoting our spiritual network through SEO and we have received great returns from it. I'm planning to promote an adult toy store via SEO. I have never done any adult store promoting before but I think there are a lot of down sides to it, such as: #1 When I search related keywords many porn websites show up; I assume it seems spammy to google's eye. Also most of the links that I will get are probably from porn websites due to relevancy. #2 Many of our returning customers are coming from retargeting but I assume there is no adult promotion via google display. Is that right? (It's not SEO related) I'm wondering to know if google is against adult content in any way? Any feedbacks are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Feb 3, 2015, 7:43 AM | Arian-Ya0 -
Bad for SEO to have two very similar websites on the same server?
Is it bad for SEO to have two very similar sites on the same server? What's the best way to set this up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Jul 14, 2014, 7:26 AM | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Black Hat SEO Case Study - Private Link Network - How is this still working?
I have been studying my competitor's link building strategies and one guy (affiliate) in particular really caught my attention. He has been using a strategy that has been working really well for the past six months or so. How well? He owns about 80% of search results for highly competitive keywords, in multiple industries, that add up to about 200,000 searches per month in total. As far as I can tell it's a private link network. Using Ahref and Open Site Explorer, I found out that he owns 1000s of bought domains, all linking to his sites. Recently, all he's been doing is essentially buying high pr domains, redesigning the site and adding new content to rank for his keywords. I reported his link-wheel scheme to Google and posted a message on the webmaster forum - no luck there. So I'm wondering how is he getting away with this? Isn't Google's algorithm sophisticated enough to catch something as obvious as this? Everyone preaches about White Hat SEO, but how can honest marketers/SEOs compete with guys like him? Any thoughts would be very helpful. I can include some of the reports I've gathered if anyone is interested to study this further. thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | Nov 28, 2013, 4:17 AM | howardd0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | May 29, 2013, 1:50 PM | LexisClick10
