Which Hat of SEO (Black/White) Goes with this Green Lace Dress?
-
Doing some research (honestly) I came across this page: http://www.modcloth.com/th/green-lace-dress
That page ranks very well for the phrase "green lace dress" - #2 in Google for me. I'm sure there's a good amount of links coming into it, but on the surface there's only 1 mention of green on the page and 2 mentions of lace.
Looking at the code, you can see ModCloth is using the Quick View links below the products to display a more detailed description of the product - wherein lies many more instances of green and lace.
So I ask: Which color of SEO hat goes with this green lace dress - Black or White? Is it good SEO to only show the product descriptions when the user initiates the Quick View? Or is it shady SEO to hide so much text from the immediate view of the user? Please select one and explain why.
-
Thanks for the ideas and input, Christina!
*Disclaimer: SEOmoz discussions are not responsible for a drop in productivity due to commenters finding the examples used to be awesome.
-
Darn you, Nate, I almost wasted the rest of my afternoon poking around ModCloth!
They are just using the main description and cutting it off, which I think is a missed opportunity. I'd do a one to two-line intro to the piece, the same way you would preface a link to an article on Twitter. I'd either take a line or two from the original description and stop there, or draft up one based on the most salient features of the item.
-
Thanks for the response, Tom! Good point about the similarity to FAQ pages.
Some retailers don't take the time to write their own product descriptions. What would you propose be different about the content on a product's page vs. that product's preview on a category page?
-
Hah! Touché Nate, lol - You are most welcome
-
Ha! Duly noted with your last name being Tan!
Those were pretty much my initial thoughts as well, just wanted to get confirmation of my thought process.
I guess I'd have to see an example of a "ridiculously spammy" Quick View link to fully understand your point on that, but the end remains the same: Do what's best for the user and all is well.
Thanks for the reply!
-
Can't see anything wrong with this at all.
It's a page designed with the user at heart. The first view keeps this concise and lets the user select the style they want, after which they can click for more information if necessary, rather than having an information overload.
Just because text is being hidden to begin with doesn't make it a bad thing. I find this very similar to the FAQ pages that you get with the sort of accordion style (click the + sign, expand for more information). I think it works well for a product page and I'm surprised it hasn't been done more.
Completely "white-hat" in my view - the only grey area would be if those descriptions are being lifted from the original page, might be a weeny bit of duplicate content in that case.
-
First let me say that I thought it was kind of funny that you posted a question about black hat/white hat regarding the color green and your last name is "White."
I don't think there's anything wrong at all by putting a more complete description in a product "Quick View...." as long as users seem to be engaged with the page. From that standpoint, my take on it is that it's totally white hat. Now, could that "Quick View" text be written in a way that's ridiculously spammy? Sure. But still, in my view it's not really "black hat" for this reason: The page wasn't constructed to deliberately hide anything from the end user. It was constructed to perhaps be more aesthetically pleasing by using the "Quick View" to make the text available to visitors without having to clog up the page with loads and loads of text visually. If the "Quick View" text was completely invisible to end users, and only visible to a bot....then I believe you'd have a black hat scenario.
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
-
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
Multiple Similar Product Variations - Page layout, Title and SEO best practice??
Im doing some research into SEO for our new web design. I sell designer eyewear prescription and sunglasses. Lets take a Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglass it comes in 30 colours and 3 sizes for each model. Up till now i was of the impression that for best practice SEO i would need to have each individual variation as its own page, this would also help with things like google shopping too. So for example heres 1 colour product in 3 sizes of 30 colour variations for this particular model. Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140
Web Design | | Craigboi1987
Colour: Black 901
Sizes: 47, 50, 54 Currently my urls looks like this with a new page and the size changing on the end for each variation. Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 47 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=47 Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 50 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=50 Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 54 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=54 This is very time consuming and I'm not sure if its adding any benefit to my SEO in fact scared its actually a) slowing my site down (content heavy)
b) looking like duplicate content I am thinking about moving towards a page more like this were it would be just be a model with variations. (not effecting the title/getting a new page per variation) http://demoleotheme.com/vigoss/index.php/atomic-endurance-running-tee-crew-neck.html I am not sure of the pros and cons of doing it this way over the way I'm doing it currently all i know is my site is ranking horribly. Lastly I'm currently running a magento V1.9 store which is renowned for duplicate content slow site speeds etc so have been told moving to woo commerce would benefit me for both site performance and seo but I'm skeptical as currently with this structure of a each SKU being a new page il be up to 8000+ products and multiple product variations that it can handle my needs, anyone with any experience on woo commerce platform? (this might be a operate question apologise) This is absolutely frying my brain so any advice appreciated. Im prepared to put every dying second into just need some solid advice in which direction to go!0 -
Is it still necessary to have a "home" page button/link in the top nav?
Or is it not necessary to have a "home" tab/link because everybody by this time knows you can get to the home page by clicking on the logo?
Web Design | | FindLaw0 -
Mega Dropdown Menus affect SEO results?
Our e-commerce website http://www.autoidsavings.com has a mega multi-level dropdown menu on top that we wanted to re-design. The real problem is the Shop By Brand menu which hovers down to 4 level at most. Our options are: 1. Limit the dropdown menu to 2 levels total. (currently have 4 levels the most) 2. Completely remove Shop By Brand Menu and create a page like https://www.cdw.com/content/brands/?cm_sp=GlobalHeader--Products|Brands--Home My concern is that will either changes help or destroy our SEO results?
Web Design | | Mobile_ID0 -
How can i embed my video into a table using SEO embed setting?
We use Wistia.com to embed our videos. They have different options for embed settings and we prefer to use the SEO embed setting, however, when we use that setting we aren't able to insert the video in a table side by side with another image or text. When we try, the video jumps out of the table and the table gets (for lack of a better work) out of wack. When we embed the video with the iframe embed setting, the video can be placed in a table with no issues, but then we don't get the SEO credit. We have our site in wordpress. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the tables getting messed up. Check out this link to see an example of how we want the video to show up. http://www.3000doorhangers.com/ Any suggestions as to how we can use the SEO embed setting within a table as shown in the above link?
Web Design | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
How to verify http://bizdetox.com for google webmaster tools
Hey guys i tried to to make a Preferred Domain choice in webmaster tools, but it is not allowing me to save my choice bec its asking me to verify that i own http://bizdetox.com How do i go about doing that and what are the steps I have already verified www.bizdetox.com
Web Design | | BizDetox0 -
Will A DHTML Overlay Or ThickBox Capturing Email Hurt SEO?
Some of our competitors use an overlay window on all their pages to sign a customer up for an email list (usually offering a coupon). Our questions is related to the impact on SEO the overlay might have. Does anyone have experience doing this and is this a "safe" thing to do related to SEO? Thanks...
Web Design | | onlineinitiatives0 -
Flash and SEO
When I search the seomoz site for "flash and seo" I only see older articles, 2008. Is there anything newer you can point me to for a current discussion on the impact on SEO of flash sites?
Web Design | | panderson3210