Shorten the content of my website homepage

[ankur]

I have a technology related website with Domain Authority 50+ and above 3 Million monthly visits. I’m thinking to shorten the content of my website homepage to make it more user centric. For most of the main industry keywords home page of the website is ranking good. Will shorting the content hamper my website ranking (Homepage and other pages) or any negative impact considering the SEO?

 

[HostNurse]

How lengthy is your homepage content? If you shorten it, would you lose too many keywords and value?

It would be helpful if you show us your website and let us know what content you are looking to remove.

 

[elcidofaguy]

I have a technology related website with Domain Authority 50+ and above 3 Million monthly visits. I’m thinking to shorten the content of my website homepage to make it more user centric. For most of the main industry keywords home page of the website is ranking good. Will shorting the content hamper my website ranking (Homepage and other pages) or any negative impact considering the SEO?

It probably will impact the relevancy of your home page with it having less info when G comes to crawling it... So it may reduce your traffic - keeping in mind most traffic tends to arrive on sub pages etc, so it may be subtle... A better approach would be to use panels/toggles etc ... So the info is still there and can be crawled/viewed by G's crawler and hopefully its a better user experience... If you do change then make sure you have a backup of the original... That aside I would try split testing different versions in an effort to increase conversions - as its not necessarily the amount of traffic that counts but the number of sales - assuming that is relevant...

 

[Marx Melencio]

Re: Hidden Text and SEO

Ankur,

In this [URLnf="http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml"]2007 interview with Matt Cutts[/URLnf] -- He said hidden text with toggles is fine, provided that you neither stuff that hidden text with keywords, nor do anything with that hidden text that could be considered as ways to trick their bots...

This means hidden text can be indexed, but Google frowns down on efforts to trick or manipulate its bots. With this, it's best to show to the user, upon toggle, the exact same text that Google sees...

So, you should primarily focus on making sure that your hidden text can be indexed, and then optimize your hidden text for human usability -- Your hidden text should, upon user toggle, be visible and accessible to widely used browsers on popular types of platforms (including mobile)...

Also, it's best to remember that Google values visible body text above the fold more than any other text place in any other area of the page -- This means text in sidebars and hidden text won't count more in the eyes of Google than visible body text above the fold, so I recommend trying to strike a balance between visible text and hidden text in your homepage (or in any other page of your site)...

That's it for now. Cheers!