Hello this is John Locke. Today I'm answering a question that is a common
misconception in SEO, and that is, "Is tabbed content, accordion content, or any
type of content that's hidden initially on the page -- are those things visible to
Googlebot? Does Googlebot count that as content on the page?" About five years
ago, Google did have a problem processing hidden content. Or it didn't count it -- Google
didn't count hidden content, that was hidden behind an accordion (where you you
tap a button, and then it opens up) -- that sort of thing. (It also couldn't "see") tabbed content, where
you have tabs at the top, and then you click one, and then different
content appears. But for the the past couple of years, Google has been able to
process that hidden content, as long as it's present in the HTML on the page,
when it comes upon that page. So if it's in the code already. Google also
processes some types of content, where if you have a drop-down menu, and it
dynamically populates content (through URL parameters) -- as in a search, where it's filtering out
different things. I wouldn't rely on that (for indexing) totally, because those sorts of
pages do get indexed sometimes. It's not a hundred percent reliable thing for
that type of dynamic content (dynamic parameter filters). But if you're just talking accordion content,
where you click a button, and the stuff opens up, and then you click it again, and
then it shuts -- like that (it gets indexed). Or if you're talking tabbed content, where there's a
series of tabs, and then you hit each one, and then that content appears in the box
below? Absolutely, Google counts that
content as part of the page. So if you're looking at a content strategy, you can
utilize that safely in a page, and it will count the words in those (initially hidden elements). The
content in there (will be seen by Googlebot). That said, many people,
when they're constructing web pages, and they're thinking about how to make pages
cleaner and less cluttered, a lot of times on pages, they will use accordions
and similar things to clean it up. That's one way you can go. If
you have a lot of content on a page, if you have a very long page --
maybe it's a FAQ, maybe you have a whole bunch of questions that
you're answering on a single page -- one thing that you might do (that I
prefer to do), is put a table of contents at the top of the page. For each question,
put in the HTML, a hyperlink, set an A tag (hyperlink) with an ID for that question. Then at
the top, put a table of contents, where each question is a link that will scroll
down, or take you down to that section of the page right to that question (when you click). I think
if you have long form content, if you have 5,000
words or longer -- having a table of contents to where things scroll down to
the specific question from the top of the page -- that could be very useful. If
you want to make it easy for people on your page to navigate, that might be
the way to go. This is something that I prefer to do. I hope that answers that
question. My name is John Locke. My business is
Lockedown Design and SEO. I'm here publishing videos every single day, and I
would love to see you subscribe. That's all I've got for right now. Until next time,
peace.