Read More Links

[preciousbags]

Hi all

My category descriptions are pretty long - no products appear above the fold due to this. However they are informative, well written and are ranking well.

If i wanted to display say just the first paragraph and then have a read more link that opens the rest of the content - could this potentially affect SEO negatively? Will google still read what's within the read more link as technically it's now hidden unless the link is clicked on.

The reason i wanted to do this is so the products firstly come above the fold - and i think visitors may not want to read all of the description. Currently customers must scroll down a few times before seeing the first product.

I did try moving the description to the bottom of the page - but noticed some rankings tanked a few positions.

Thanks

 

[Joe Robinson]

Shouldn't have any negative effect. You can do it in CSS or JavaScript and Google will be able to understand, and might reward you for making user experience improvements.

 

[UKSBD]

I set up a little test for this to see if Google would see a made up word - https://www.sim64.co.uk/cat/javascript-what-does-google-see/

Click on the read more, search for the made up word, you will see that Google reads it no problem.

 

[Joe Robinson]

@UKSBD very nice

 

[justinaldridge]

Is your website in the mobile first index? If so then you won't have any problem putting most of the text in an expanding read more div.

For mobile first it's much more important to raise your products higher up the page than displaying the written content. We've seen that pages with too much text that pushes the products out of sight of the visible mobile screen have lost positions on the changeover to mobile first.