Display: none
-
A prominent SEO consultant recently told me that using display:none in the css is still a bad idea. We built a simple drop down menu using widely used jquery techniques and it uses display:none to slideToggle the menu.
Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? If so, how should I change it since just about every jquery drop down I come across uses the slideToggle/display:none.
-
I'd suggest checking that any jquery solution hides stuff with display:none after the page has loaded. Essentially is the content/menu fully visible when you turn javascript off and load the page? (regardless of how horrific the display looks?)
Bear in mind that Google also advises against things like display:none for implementation of things like microformats.
-
Using display:none is fine. There's JavaScript on the page that will make those items display when the users takes some action on the menu. Google has some way of reading the JavaScript to see what may be displayed, and at this point, I'm sure they're very good at detecting these types of menus. I don't think you can't make a menu like that without using it, and tons of sites use them.
Obviously, you shouldn't use display:none to cloak text on the page, when no user action can get that text to be displayed.
-
Conventional wisdom says this is a bad idea because its a technique used by black-hats to stuff keywords into their documents. See:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-unwise-comments/
However, for JQuery and things like menu's and screen reader links, Google appears to know the difference. See:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=50f9a4942ac605ec&hl=en
The takeaway is you can use this, and its unlikely to get your site penalized. But be careful that what you're doing is both (a) common practice and (b) couldn't get caught in a spam finding algorithm. If you are in MLM or pharmaceuticals or something that often gets associated with spam, you'll want to avoid using these techniques. If there's no way your site could be considered spam and you're using display:none legitimately, then you'll be safe.
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
-
Google displaying different meta descriptions for the same URL but different keyword
Hi All, A quick question that may even have a quick answer: Why would Google display a different meta description for the same URL for a different keyword? For example I enter 2 of our similar keywords into Google: KEYWORD A | META DESCRIPTION A DISPLAYED | URL A KEYWORD B | META DESCRIPTION B DISPLAYED | URL A Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Page Title Displaying differently on Google
Hi i am wondering why page title is display differently on google search. The combination of words that are being displayed on google are not on the page and the page title is simply "Camera Filters", however the page is showing as "our range of Camera Filters" (with the same capitalisation). http://awesomescreenshot.com/0cf4r09y27 I have optimised the age as best i can so it removes the OUR RANGE OF preface, however no luck. Any info would be appreciated. Cheers
Technical SEO | | andrewlos0 -
Google Displaying wrong URL but correct page title and description in SERPS
Hi. Our second highest performing page on Google is messed up in the SERPS. This is our login page. It always ranks high. It still does, but the URL is incorrect. Google is referencing an old redirect that was for a one off campaign from January 2014. This page has long been redirected. But now the vanity url for this page is what is displayed in Google. The link goes to our login page but once you log in it redirects you to a page saying the offer has expired instead of your account details. This is a huge issue for us. Can anyone shed some light? I'm having a rel canonical added since this page is used for a lot of vanity deeplinks.
Technical SEO | | PollyKane0 -
Looking for a tool that will display the contents of the htaccess file
I am looking for an online tool that will display the contents of the htaccess file. i came across a tool a month ago, but I can not recall the name of the tool. Thanks
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
How to display the full structure of website on Google serps
I have been searching around but unable to gather information as to how we can control or list top pages of a website on Google's first page , i.e. if we type seomoz in google , we can see the main listing with 6 subdomain listings , which link to Blog , Seo tool , Beginner Seo guide , Learn Seo , Pricing & Plans and login My question is can we control these listings i.e. what to display and what not , and if yes how can we make this type of visibility on first page , by using html or xml sitemaps or theirs something mostly websites are missing. Cause this type of data is coming up for very less websites and mostly websites are with single urls. c43Ki.jpg
Technical SEO | | ngupta10 -
Getting a video displaying a lightbox indexed
We have created a video for a category page with the goal of building links to the page and improving the conversion rate of visitors to the page. This category is Christmas oriented so we want to get the video dropped in ASAP. Unfortunately there was a mixup with our developer and he created a lightbox pop-up to display the video on the category page. I'm concerned this will hurt our ability to get the video indexed in Google. Here was his response. Is what he says here true? "With the video originally being in lightbox the iFrame Embed was enough since the video can't be on the page, it would have to be hidden on the page which is ignored by Google. The SEO would be derived from modifying the video sitemap to define the category page as the HTML page for the Wistia video and Google will make the association. The sitemap did all the heavy lifting, the schema markup did not come till later so it had no additional affect on Google other then to re-enforce the sitemap." Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GManSEO0 -
Dramatic Decrease in Google Organic Traffic Indicates a Penalty But None Found
So we've been having some difficulty with one of our websites since we split it in half and moved one section of content to a new domain with a new name, at the end of May. http://www.dialtosave.co.uk/mobile/ was moved to http://www.somobile.co.uk And in the following 6 weeks, the google organic traffic has fallen to miniscule levels, that seem to indicate a more serious issue than just low ranking. Initially when the site was moved, the 301s transferred the authority very quickly and the new website pages ranked well. Now, some of them simply won't rank at all unless you include the name of the website "somobile". Here is one of the current rankings that indicates an issue:
Technical SEO | | purpleindigo
"somobile" - 1
"somobile mobile phones" - not in top 50 These are some of the terms we used to rank in the top 10 on Google UK, and still do on Bing UK, but don't rank in the top 50 on Google UK now:
samsung galaxy ace
apple iphone 5 deals
samsung tocco icon Our webmaster central account says that only 30% of the pages in our sitemap are in the index. It seems like a penalty has been imposed, but our reconsideration request (just submitted because it seemed like a sensible next step) came back saying there were no manual actions taken. Can you see what it is that might be causing the problem for us? I would have thought it was the new domain (with less direct links and less brand credibility), or content issues, but I would have thought that would just reduce the ranking by a few pages rather than just hide the pages altogether.0 -
How do I get Google to display categories instead of the URL in results?
I've seen that for some domains Google will show a nice clickable site heirarchy in place of the actual URL of a search result. See attached for an example. How do I go about achieving this type of results? categorized.png
Technical SEO | | Carlito-2569610