stacked divs/z-index! a problem for seo?

[ssbeats]

Hi.

I am building a site where on some of the pages i have stacked divs with content on top of each other so that when i click on a link the appropriate div comes to the top by changing the z-index. (hope that makes sense).

So is this a problem for seo? I have googled this and posted on a few forums but have not had a response. However, i am worried because i can see how this might look like a blackhat method.

Cheers!

[JPnyc]

Bots just read the code, and the code isn't stacked, so no, it's no problem. Likewise dynamic menus that are hard coded into the page and shown/hidden with JS. It's the ones that write to the page on the fly that hurt your SEO.

[ssbeats]

Thats good news although im suprised.

Since you cant see the hidden divs could this not then be used to stuff the page full of content?

Also, can you think of any reason not to stack divs? It provides for instant navigation and allows users to view content in one place as opposed to scrolling down the page, which may even make the page more accessible providing there were access keys etc.

It seems a little bit too obvious. :-)

Thanks for your reply!

[felgall]

Stacking divs makes the page bigger which adds to the load time.

Anyone with CSS turned off will not see them stacked but will see them all one after the other. Anyone with JavaScript turned off may not be able to change the stack order to see the other content.

[SEO_guru]

Because search engines read the source contents of a web page, if the contents are all seen when you "view source", it is generally going to result in the search engines reading all that content and indexing your page accordingly.

There are people who say it's not good to use techniques like :hidden content and others who say it doesn't matter.

Yes, people can and probably do use these techniques to try and stuff the search engines. But Google is aware of this and you can bet they continually find ways to determine if there is a legitimate use of the techniques or if it's stuffing. This means that the potential exists for penalties over time, however you'd really have to abuse the technique to get penalized.

One reality is in comparing the page title tag's words to the contents on the page, regardless of whether the content is initially seen or if it's stacked or hidden until some user action. The only real weight for SEO purposes is given to content that matches the page title, followed by the key words that anchor links to that page, and so forth.

Because of this, it's always best to limit the contents on any given page to that text which will best relate to those keywords. Do that and don't intentionally try to stuff the search engines, and regardless of your methods, if it can be seen when viewing source in a web browser, you should be fine.