Accordian style descriptions on the product page affecting SEO

[Shawn17]

Disclaimer: I'm not new to Shopify but I am a bit of an SEO newb. It is something we have probably neglected for too long. 

I understand product descriptions are important for SEO. Some themes and apps offer the ability to replace (or augment) the Shopify product description under tabs (like accordion style) on the product page. Since the description is then effectively hidden under the tab until expanded by the customer, does this men the info is not available for Google when it crawls the page for SEO. Does this have any other adverse effect on SEO since the product details now live in the theme or app rather than the product page itself?

Thanks!

[Josh_Uebergang]

It's not a perfectly clear subject in the SEO world. The general consensus is it's fine and won't affect SEO especially in a mobile-first world.

You can read more on the subject here: https://www.marion.com/collapsible-content-seo-tabbed-accordion-click-to-expand/

[Shawn17]

Thanks Josh. Appreciate the info and the article. That helped clear things up. 

If I can ask a related question - does it matter the source of the info on the page? For example, my theme has a built-in announcement bar but I prefer to use an app for the announcement bar. I don't know the nature of the difference between the two from a code perspective but at least to the website visitor, both options look basically the same. 

Is there any reason to believe I'd get SEO punished for using the app as opposed to the theme?

[Josh_Uebergang · Accepted solution]

The source of how it's done is unlikely to do differ, but it MAY. Most app and theme developers in Shopify will follow best practice of having the content rendered as HTML. You can likely confirm this by viewing the source code of the page and searching some content that is hidden in the accordion. If you can find the content, then Google will be able to as well. The problem that you may get into is if you can't find the content, because the app has buried it within JavaScript. Google can still crawl JavaScript, but it can become problematic.

[Shawn17]

This is great information. Thank you for explaining!

[jessica0318]

I would also like to know how to solve this problem!