Does 'jump to' navigation work with a hidden div?
-
Will jump to navigation work when using a hidden div? Basically, we use a navigation system such that when a user clicks on a title, it expands to show the rest of the article, each title has an anchor associated with it, but no where else on the page / site do we link to those anchors.
In order to make jump to navigation work, we are considering adding a hidden div with links to the anchors. Does anyone have experience doing this? Did it work?
-
The best I can think of would be to link to the anchors from the page the "level" above.
In other words, on a category page (or equivalent), display links to the page plus its named anchors (actually, much like Google's sitelinks). It's impossible to weigh up the relative weight of links from within the page to links from elsewhere on the site without inside knowledge, but I would prefer this to hidden links.
-
Hi WIll,
Yes, I understand that 'jump to navigation' is determined algorithmically.
We can't actually link to the anchors because, as mentioned, the UI we've developed has better user engagement (one of our main goals is to improve user engagement site-wide). The anchors exist in a sort of expand / collapse format, so that the user can see the entire content and click on titles to see more.
I suppose the other option would be to put it in a hidden div, and add javascript so that the user could see the links if they wanted (even though, essentially, there isn't any value-add to the user since they can already see the content list)?
-
Firstly, it isn't automatic for Google to add links to your in-page anchors no matter what you do.
It's hard to say for sure whether placing hidden links to the named anchors will work in your specific case - but I would say that if it does work, I'd view it as a short-term solution and probably more risky than I'd like to see for limited reward.
Why not actually link to the anchors? If you think that people might want to jump direct to them from the search results, mightn't people want to navigate to them when they're on your site as well?
There is essentially never a good reason for hiding information that you want Google to find - it should be there for the users as well.
-
Mainly, would google use 'jump to' sections of our page in the SERPs. We have anchors, but no links to the anchors, and are hoping that by adding a hidden div with links to the anchors, it will activate 'jump to navigation.'
The hidden div would be added just for the sake of adding the links to the anchors--it wouldn't be visible to users. We've found user engagement is higher for the type of navigation we built, but want to make sure 'jump to' works (is visiible in google SERPs).
Thanks in advance for your help.
-
Hi Michelle,
What do you mean by "work"? Are you intending to have a way of exposing this hidden div (in a drop-down or similar)?
One of the most common uses of jump to navigation is for screen readers for the visually-impaired. I imagine that a hidden div could work well for that as they typically ignore CSS styling but I imagine it would need testing in the specific readers.
Happy to dig into this further if you have more info about your plans.
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
-
My homepage doesn't seem to be indexed. Any suggestions?
As the title said, I don't think my homepage is being indexed. When I use "site:" search operator it's not there, but it's still ranking for other various keywords. Also the pages of my site I would expect to see with the "site:" search operator aren't there either. Site for reference: three29.com Any ideas what could be causing this? I don't have any errors or penalties in Search Console. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Three290 -
Weird rankings... I'm lost & confused...
Hey guys, I've started working with this client a while back. Everything is working perfectly, we create great content, earn links and rank on a lot of interesting terms. Except for one term... It's keyword difficulty isn't even that high: 38%. (We rank on some keywords which have 60%). They got everything right: interesting and engaging content, a diversified backlink profile (with many organic good links), good on-page SEO but nothing can move them up. Some websites with a lower DA & MozRank are outranking them although they don't do anything regarding their SEO except buying scrappy links. The only thing I can see is that they transitioned to HTTPs and that plenty of their links directed to the HTTP domain. The 301 was done during the transition so I don't think we lost too much of link juice... Please note that during the Keyword Difficulty full-report, I noticed that all their metrics are similar to the first few results in SERPs and largely outpace the others... Any idea on what might be happening? Thanks for your help :)!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PierreLechelle0 -
Interlinking vs. 'orphaning' mobile page versions in a dynamic serving scenario
Hi there, I'd love to get the Moz community's take on this. We are working on setting up dynamic serving for mobile versions of our pages. During the process of planning the mobile version of a page, we identified a type of navigational links that, while useful enough for desktop visitors, we feel would not be as useful to mobile visitors. We would like to remove these from our mobile version of the page as part of offering a more streamlined mobile page. So we feel that we're making a fine decision with user experience in mind. On any single page, the number of links removed in the mobile version would be relatively few. The question is: is there any danger in “orphaning” the mobile versions of certain pages because links don’t exist pointing to those pages on our mobile pages? Is this a legitimate concern, or is it enough that none of the desktop versions of pages are orphaned? We were not sure whether it’s even possible, in Googlebot’s eyes, to orphan a mobile version of a page if we use dynamic serving and if there are no orphaned desktop versions of our pages. (We also plan to link to "full site" in the footer.) Thank you in advance for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
Eric0 -
Google is ranking the wrong page and I don't know why?
I have an E-Commerce store and to make things easy, let's say I am selling shoes. There is: Category named 'Shoes' and 3 products 'Sport shoes', 'Hiking shoes' and 'Dancing shoes' My problem: For the keyword 'Shoes' Google is showing the product result 'Sport shoes'. This makes no sense from user perspective. (It's like searching for 'iPhone' and getting a result for 'iPhone 4s' instead of a general overview.) Now what are the specifics of my category page (Which I want Google to rank): It has more external links with higher quality It has more internal links It has much higher page authority It has useful text to guide the user for the keyword It is a category instead of a product All this given, I just don't know how I can signal Google that this page makes sense to show in SERPs? Hope you can help with this!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Organic 'not provided data' - strip out brand?
I cannot strip out brand data on the 'not provided' keywords in Google analytics. Is this not possible anymore? I understand we cannot get specific keywords but can we no longer strip out brand on organic traffic in Google analytics for keywords that are 'not provided' ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What's your Link Building Tactics?
So my question is: What's your Link Building Tactic. I always have a bit of a problem building links for my websites. Also Do you use some kind of a tool? If yes can you reccomend it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Multiple Locations Google Places (URL's)?
I'm managing a restaurant chain with 10 locations. Can they all share the home page url of the corporate site in Google Places or is it better to link each location url separately? Meaning can I use www.company.com for all locations in Google places for all locations or is it better to go with www.company.com/location.html for each location. The page authority of the home page is 60 while individual location pages the page authority is in the 20's. Hope this makes sense. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YMD
Gary0 -
How to check a website's architecture?
Hello everyone, I am an SEO analyst - a good one - but I am weak in technical aspects. I do not know any programming and only a little HTML. I know this is a major weakness for an SEO so my first request to you all is to guide me how to learn HTML and some basic PHP programming. Secondly... about the topic of this particular question - I know that a website should have a flat architecture... but I do not know how to find out if a website's architecture is flat or not, good or bad. Please help me out on this... I would be obliged. Eagerly awaiting your responses, BEst Regards, Talha
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0