Multiple H2 with no direct links to content and invisible body text - is this an issue?

[curveballmedia]

OK, so we've lost pagerank and I think it's because of the way our site works (and we operate it).

We have a videofolio, which shows on most of our pages, showcasing our work. Over time, we have tended to unpublish these pages and created new videofolio pages to show on our home page and relevant pages.

The videofolio is a set of pages, each with a title, body text and a place to insert a link to the video, which is played through a videofolio showcase on our website (www.curveball-media.co.uk). Each is set a category, e.g. film, and when the user clicks the tab for 'film', the thumbnails pop up and the user can play the video.

We have to work it this way as it's the only way to remove the videos from showing on our home page and to show new content instead. Simply deselecting a category still allows the videos to be seen when the 'all' category is selected by the user.

Last week, I found a way of bringing back these unpublished pages by removing the 'all' tab from the videofolio. Then I turned each one into a blog like structure instead. Essentially, instead of the video link being played through the videofolio, we deselected a category (e.g. animation, film etc) and left the page floating. The only way you can access it without being attached to a videofolio category is through the direct link.

By turning off the 'all' category and deselecting the page from any other categories, we were able to properly SEO these pages.

NB: If they are created for use with the videofolio, you can have only extremely limited body text and no H2, as this is the text that appears when you hover over the video thumbnail. That's just the nature of the template.

What I didn't anticipate is that now the code on the home page shows all these now (un)published pages and their corresponding H2 tags. Without a category selected, there is no way to get to these pages unless I create a direct link. I plan to do this through a blog post.

In the home page code, the entire videofolio page shows, including the body text and link to the video. **This text doesn't show on the home page though, i.e. the user never sees this text. **

1. Is it an issue to have so many similar H2 tags on the homepage?

2. Is it an issue that the code has text which is essentially invisible on the home page?

3. Is it an issue that the content is not linked to through the home page visibly?

Thanks!

[curveballmedia]

Thank you for your response. Rather than me try and explain further (it is complicated). I've just removed the offending content from the page. Thank you for taking the time to answer.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi curveballmedia, did you see the thoughtful response Ria Parish sent you? She asked some excellent questions, and we'd love to help you figure this out if you are able to provide some clarifying information.

Christy

[Ria_]

Sorry, I don't know if I'm the only one but I found this really confusing to follow and visualise. I understand if not, but is it possible to share the link so we can have a look?

Multiple H2s is fine and whether there may be an issue or not depends on how similar they are and how many exactly. Obviously 50 duplicate H2s will potentially be seen as spammy. As for the invisible text, is this hidden to users with something like display:none so is still readable by crawlers? If so, Google doesn't approve of hiding content or making content inaccessible to users with the intention of manipulating rankings. It may be seen as you deliberately attempting to get your keywords in for SEO, without it being of value to the user. With the perspective that if it it had value to the user, then it wouldn't be hidden. So it must only be there to game the search engines.