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    Putting your content behind the tabs is one common solution to keep the body of the website content concise. Providing users an ability to show, or else hide your content with one single click. However, is tabbed content one good thing for SEO efforts?

    Quite recently Gary Illyes from Google declared that they are fine with the tabbed content.

    Tabbed Content for SEO. Is it Bad?

    So the question is not whether the tabbed content is search engine friendly but how you can implement this in the right way. Google has ranked websites based on their user experience which is why the tabbed content SEO traditionally has been seen as less weighty in the search engine results compared to SEO terms, which show up when the page loads. The user looking for a set item can skim an opening page to get what they are searching for. They will not open tabs and click through to the content that isn’t immediately showing. This follows suit when the searcher lands on the page as the keyword is in the hidden or tabbed field, often they’ll leave that website without further searching. For the user, the website seems to have missed a mark on what they are searching for, thus user experience is negative here.

    Accordion Content & SEO

    The accordion content is one term that is derived from the instrument itself. It is one way of creating links or lists on the web page to organize the content in a better way. Users will open more information just by clicking out to reveal larger content. It is a popular design feature for many reasons. However, for the SEO purposes, this was thought that the search engine terms that were used on a front page, and what is seen by the user without even clicking in hidden fields, and were highly valuable.

    It has been debated for a long how valuable the SEO terms were in these hidden fields, such as tabbed content, accordion content, and sliding menus. Google has not released any such guidelines and official statements over how they rank content that is in the hidden fields. We know that Google crawls such content, however, test data earlier showed that content inside the hidden field has been treated with less importance than search engine content that is not hidden.

    If SEO Is Not Useful in the Hidden Fields Then Why to Use?

    There’re many amazing reasons for using different design options, which allow for hidden fields. Many websites make use of such features specifically for measuring engagement as well as helping them to build the marketing funnel. They will collect analytics on the users that take the right action by clicking on the next section of the content. In a few cases, the hidden fields may just be the measure of improving the user experience. The design allows users to decide how much content they want to see. For example, one user may glean all they want from an opening page. Another user would like to dig much deeper and open hidden fields for getting more details on some aspects of the page and services.

    There was never a negative aspect of using any hidden fields, besides the inability of getting the SEO terms that are ranked from the content. Most of the content creators just tailored the SEO efforts for loading page content, instead of any hidden content fields.

    So, what makes this matter a bit more convoluted is a fact that Google has not officially released any stance on if it is fine to use search engine optimization in the hidden fields. Prominent thought that they are weighted very less is totally based on the experience, although that is tough to quantify or test.

    How To Avoid Tabbed Content and Provide Good User Experience?

    Suppose you think your website page has “a lot of information”, then avoid any urge to slap over the bunch of tabs. But, leverage the power of the anchor text, and where you can click on the subtopic or immediately drop to the portion of a page.

    The full content disclosure by use of the anchor text navigation can get rewarded by Google. This will ensure a delightful user experience and result in the Search Engine & UX win-win!

     

    Written by Aayush
    Writer, editor, and marketing professional with 10 years of experience, Aayush Singh is a digital nomad. With a focus on engaging digital content and SEO campaigns for SMB, and enterprise clients, he is the content creator & manager at SERP WIZARD.