Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Peter Levi on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/08/2018).

What are you thoughts about "accordion" and putting content behind it?

What are you thoughts about "accordion" and putting content behind it (for conversion purposes or whatever). Google now can read java script etc, so techically it should not be a problem (it use to be a problem and I tend to beleive still is) What is you test data? In my tests it seems to still make a negative ranking influence (though nothing conclusive)
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Alan Bleiweiss: For desktop rankings, content not immediately available without a click action is considered less important than content visible on page load. John Mueller confirmed this at least a year ago. Discussions came up last year as to how they would handle it on mobile sites, when they roll out the mobile first initiative, however I don`t think an answer has been provided to that question yet. Jennifer Slegg may know about the mobile consideration since she is the industry`s leading documenter of Mobile First facts vs. fiction.
  • David Kutcher: From a SEO I don`t really care one way or the other, more importantly IMO is the user experience of that content. Will users see it? Will they know to click and read it? If it serves a purpose to the User, UX, and goals of the site and the User, why hide it behind a click? Otherwise what you`re saying is that its purpose is really for SEO, rendering it no different than a display: none.
  • Jeremy L. Knauff: Why make it more difficult for visitors to access your content?
  • Kath Dawson Courtney: What about an FAQ page? A list of questions you click to open makes more sense than a long list where you need to scroll to find your question. Better UX to click on this page?
  • Yuliana Kronrod: A competitor’s rankings recently dipped after they redesigned and hid a lot of content in accordions. FAQ pages are a different beast though - they rarely rank for anything other than “product/service faq” so you one can choose accordions and not hurt SEO as much.
  • Alan Bleiweiss: FAQ pages rarely provide strong, proper, well organized, complete answers. That is why they rarely rank. I have helped clients turn one junky FAQ page into several pages in a "knowledge base" type model, and suddenly Ranking, dwell time, pages per visit and conversions all went up for those questions and answers.
  • Ash Nallawalla: In a large finance-sector company we have to work with large UX teams and their external consultants. They make a compelling case that large screeds of text might be SEO`s wet dreams, but are tedious to scroll through on mobiles and tablets. We try to restrict accordions to 2-3 FAQs per product page.
  • Tom Gooden: It’s just not good user experience.
  • Alan Bleiweiss: Blanket statements are often toxic to proper understanding.
  • Alfredo Morante Castellano: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.seroundtable.com/amp/google-content-hidden-mobile-24111.html

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/08/2018).