How Tabbed & Accordion Content Is Useful For SEO?

The trend of putting content behind tabs and accordions is something not so new for SEO and much ok too. Today “content is king” which makes it one of the most important factors for internet marketing strategy and getting it displayed correctly to users matter a lot. However there are no fixed bars about displaying the content, but some guidelines have been issued around it by Google.

Ensure that your website’s important content is always visible and Google bots gets to crawl HTML content hidden inside navigational elements like tabs or expanding sections easily. Moreover would like to add that this content must be less accessible to users, and emphasize that most important information gets visible in default page view.

The Content tabs and accordions are definitely useful as long as you are considering what might be crucial for your users and search engines to read. The information may not sound so important when it comes to SEO, but it doesn’t mean that Google cannot read or index it, only that it’s viewed as less important for organic rankings. Always ensure that your users can see it by default.

Here we have enlisted some important guidelines for having an organized content on your website:

Tabbed Content for SEO

Here, plenty of space is available for company’s most important content to be default visible including a application info, product summary, benefits and a detailed product overview – all great information for users and search engines.  Tabs contain tertiary information like a product video, technical information and product literature that can be downloaded especially for end users. This tertiary information is beneficial but not so influential for organic rankings. Putting it in tabs for the user is a fine solution.

What about Mobile Version?

As primary mobile index from Google already being arrived, website’s content handling on mobile devices is crucial. While announcing mobile first index, Google’s Gary Illyes specified that content behind tabs or accordions for mobile user experience will have full SEO privilege. These content tabs and accordions will definitely make the mobile experience much better for users to easily expand this content without lots of scrolling. In brief, using content tabs or accordions is good for a mobile device.

Accordion Content for SEO

Content accordions are suitable for large content displaying on mobile, like FAQ’s type content. Responsive website’s must be designed properly to show all useful FAQ content by default on the desktop view, but transitions to accordions on mobile device is easy user experience for mobile users.

Content Dropdowns for SEO

Tabs and accordions are not the only design elements for content display. Content dropdowns is a good option for information display to get a user interacts with it. Just like tabs and accordions, content shows based on users selection and by default. If purpose of content is only to influence rankings, variation in strategy for displaying all the content might be necessary. Here the tools would be present to stay informational and interactive resource for users.

Conclusion

Always remember that designing content for SEO, must always be designing for people. What information will your customers need to be able to access quickly to get closer in their decision-making process? Display that content up front. Make their experience an easy and intuitive one no matter which device they are using.