White Space, Below The Fold, Matter With Engines? Options

[kevs]

I like to put some stuff 'below the fold" ie far down on my homepage, ie various text.

I'm 95% sure the amount of white space between the above the fold and text below the fold does not matter, but you never know so I have to ask-- could that affect ranking weather the text below the fold is down 1-2 pages or down 5-10 pages? thanks!

[bwelford]

White space would not be a problem, kevs.

[kevs]

Great B! thanks for the confirmation

[bobbb]

I'm curious. Why so much white space between the fold and that text w-a-y at the bottom? I would tend to think people will not scroll down that far if there is that much white space.

[fisicx]

Unless of course it is to add lots of luverly keywords down the bottom of the page. Google isn't stupid - if it sees loads of empty <p></p> or <br> then it will soon realise that this is an obvious attempt to influence your ranking rather than provide content for your visitors.

[rynert]

I like to put some stuff 'below the fold" ie far down on my homepage, ie various text.

If the text is for your visitor, why the big space?

If the text is for search engines, best to not bother.

[bobbb]

Unless of course it is to add lots of luverly keywords down the bottom of the page

If the text is for search engines, best to not bother

Hidden in my question that was really my question too.

[kevs]

The text is pretty good -- it's real text, not just a bunch of repeated keywords. Still, as visual artists, I don't care too much about it. I prefer people contentrating on what's above the folder.

Barry, what do you think? Do you agree that Google will see the page breaks and it's an issue?

[bwelford]

As fisicx has said, it depends what's below the page breaks. For either human visitors or search engine robots, lots of white space seems unnecessary and may raise lots of questions. I would think that just doing enough to get the text off the initial screen, i.e. below the fold, is all you need.

[glyn]

You can make text that happens below the fold look like proper content, and there is absolutely no way on earth Google can block it.

[kevs]

Barry,
my text below the fold was about 1-2 pages down. But a friend of mine said he stumbled upon it and suggested to put it much farther down. You think the more page breaks you have, then greater a risk? I have no idea. Maybe there is zero risk if it's 10 pages down. Maybe it's an issue? what do you think?

[bwelford]

I think you're being over-cautious here, kevs. If it's on the page, then some human visitors will see it and most will probably not.

The observant will see that vertical scroll bar at the right and realize there's something down below. The quickest way to check is to click on <control><end>, which takes you right to the bottom. Of course those who are savvy enough to realize this may wonder why you are going to all this trouble.

Since I wouldn't want to irritate these more expert visitors, I think you've got to design the upper part and the text so that it looks good to them. This will also be in line with how search engines like to see things arranged too. Perhaps you need to join the Big Footer League, as by coincidence I blogged about yesterday.

[kevs]

thanks Barry, well, if I knew 100%, I could put 8 pages of white I would, but previous poster put a scare in me, ie that Google could notice more page breaks, so I'll play it a bit safe, as I've been doing.

Lets face it right, 97% of population does not notice the right hand scroll bar, or think of scrolling if the page looks complete and done, right?

[A.N.Onym]

Seriously, if the text is for the humans, why not show it to them, even if under the fold?

Artistic or not, text is sometimes helpful, too.

[fisicx]

What you are suggesting is that you want people to look at your artistic work rather than read some words. But you want the SE to index the page so are resorting to a trick to get the keywords on the page but not be immediately visible to the human visitor.

This trick is so transparent that the SE will pick it up in seconds so don't do it.

97% don't notice the scrollbar? Where did that figure come from?

[bwelford]

Even if it's only 3%, that may well be the most interesting part of your audience.

[kevs]

Barry,
what do you recommend? The page currently, (which is indexed for 10 years, and does very well ranking wise)
curretnly has about a page of white space. I would love to quaduple that or even more, but should I be worried about all the extra page breaks, as the poster said? I don't want to jeapordize my listing. It would not be worth it. But if it was 100% no risk I would increase.

[bwelford]

kevs, if all you are concerned about is the extra white space in exactly the same content, then I wouldn't worry for a moment as far as the search engines go.

I would worry about the possible effect on some of my more astute human visitors.

[Ron Carnell]

I would worry about the possible effect on some of my more astute human visitors.

Especially the ones who know how to file spam reports?

[kevs]

Ron -- exactly. I think adding 4-8 more pages of white space, may inspire that by others to file/report...

Right now is about 1 1/2 to 2 pages below the fold. So I'm going to stay put. I lot of people have about that amount as well

Arcane, but important discussion. thanks!