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.
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
-
Incorrect Logo is Displaying on Google Knowledge Graph - Need Urgent Solution!!
Incorrect Logo is Displaying on Google Knowledge Graph for our company. We have structured schema for logo etc. But still, Google is fetching and showing logo from some other sources on google search results. What will be the right fix for this? Our site url : http://www.travelyaari.com/
Technical SEO | | RobinJA0 -
How are these links being displayed?
How does one markup their site to get the small sitelinks to appear in SERP listings as seen in the example image below? jJiQYy3
Technical SEO | | SelectHub0 -
My SERP meta description is displaying 315 characters...
Hi Mozzers, We have recently taken the #2 spot for our main keyword in Google UK serp. I just checked again and we have dropped to #4 and our meta description is no longer there as it has been replaced with some homepage content... 315 characters of homepage content right up to the full stop. I'm a little confused. A couple of our competitors meta descriptions are showing the same, extra long homepage text instead. Is there something totally normal and harmless causing this or do I need to be monitoring/changing something? Has Google made an update to allow for longer meta decs? Any advice appreciated! sWrBcuB.png
Technical SEO | | SanjidaKazi0 -
Why is Google's cache preview showing different version of webpage (i.e. not displaying content)
My URL is: http://www.fslocal.comRecently, we discovered Google's cached snapshots of our business listings look different from what's displayed to users. The main issue? Our content isn't displayed in cached results (although while the content isn't visible on the front-end of cached pages, the text can be found when you view the page source of that cached result).These listings are structured so everything is coded and contained within 1 page (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/). But even though the URL stays the same, we've created separate "pages" of content (e.g. "About," "Additional Info," "Contact," etc.) for each listing, and only 1 "page" of content will ever be displayed to the user at a time. This is controlled by JavaScript and using display:none in CSS. Why do our cached results look different? Why would our content not show up in Google's cache preview, even though the text can be found in the page source? Does it have to do with the way we're using display:none? Are there negative SEO effects with regards to how we're using it (i.e. we're employing it strictly for aesthetics, but is it possible Google thinks we're trying to hide text)? Google's Technical Guidelines recommends against using "fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash." If we were to separate those business listing "pages" into actual separate URLs (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/contact/ would be the "Contact" page), and employ static HTML code instead of complicated JavaScript, would that solve the problem? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fslocal0 -
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 -
Setting preferred domain as www or none www
Way back before panda I used to rank for certain keywords pretty well. Of course like many others after panda I lost some of those rankings. I have been getting better since then so its not that bad. I was poking around in Google Webmaster Tools and I noticed something which I need some clarification in. History my site freescrabbledictionary.com used to be indexed as a none www. Then some time ago I can't remember when I set it to www. Tonight I was looking through my webmaster tools and I noticed something that did not make sense to me. In my content keywords section for the none www my list is as follows Content Keywords <form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET"> Keyword Significance 1. scrabble 2. words (2 variants) 3. dictionary 4. cheat 5. finder 6. friends 7. maker (2 variants) 8. noun 9. letter (2 variants) 10. hasbro 11. mattel 12. spear 13. found (2 variants) 14. sowpods 15. freescrabbledictionary 16. builder 17. affiliated 18. search 19. solver 20. lists </form> Then I looked at my www lists and its Content Keywords <form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET"> Keyword Significance 1. words (3 variants) 2. scrabble (2 variants) 3. letter (4 variants) 4. points 5. cheat (3 variants) 6. friends (2 variants) 7. finder (2 variants) 8. anagram (2 variants) 9. dictionary 10. tool (2 variants) 11. hasbro 12. mattel 13. spear 14. game (4 variants) 15. mobile 16. affiliated (3 variants) 17. berkshire 18. canada 19. calculations (5 variants) 20. coming (4 variants) </form> My none www version has the order (especially the first 5 keywords) that I want, my www version is no were near it. If I change back to the none www version could I possible see an change in rank? or can it effect it if I change it? I am starting to think I shot myself in the foot when I switched...
Technical SEO | | cbielich0 -
Advice on display this content on my page for search engines
Hi, my website http://www.in2town.co.uk/Holiday-News is about bringing travel and holiday news to our readers of our lifestyle magazine but i am having problems at the moment with the layout. What i mean by this is, i have written content on the page as an introduction so google knows what this section of the site is about but to be honest it looks rubbish with having the introduction there and i would like to know if i am doing the right thing by having the content there for google to know what my site is about. I have tried taking it away and noticed i dropped in the rankings and when i have put it back up i go up in the rankings, can anyone please give me some advice over this issue
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Best way to display maintenence mode on a website?
I have a website with lots of traffic and sometimes the backends fail. I want to use lighttpd to show that the website is under mantenence and should be back up shortly. I was thinking of using Soft 503 errors or doing a 302 for every page to /maintenance.html. What would you do (besides fixing the backends, we are already doing that :P) to avoid hurting your SEO efforts? Thanks in advance Mariano
Technical SEO | | marianoSoler980