I have 2 questions that I hope someone has a more direct answer for than what I have been able to find. I am currently using the Dawn theme and I would like to put my product description into collapsible content (moving it below the product images, so I’m using {{product.description}} for one of the rows, & the rest of the rows’ content will be with custom liquid.)
My product description is very long – almost blog length long for reference – including numerous images throughout the description to try to make it more visually enjoyable to read through.
In order to do this, I added a custom liquid field TO my collapsible content section and I am going to put the info into this section since it’s easier to keep my original formatting (the rte metafields are too limited and doesn’t allow images and other formatting).
MY QUESTIONS:
I know there was some back and forth with Google for the past few years if putting info in collapsible content will hurt your SEO. And my question is…does anyone have any ACTUAL first-hand experience yet, negative or positive, if doing this has affected your current SEO rankings? Made it worse, better, no difference?
What about if I am using metafields & custom liquid for my content in these sections? Will this be an additional SEO issue for any reason?
I am currently ranking for a lot of keywords on the first page and 90% of my sales are from organic google searches, so I am worried to try it out to see for myself in case I make a big mistake.
I know some people say it’s ok and some say it may hurt…so I’m looking for anyone who has actual experience in doing this & can give first hand anecdotal input.
It would not affect your SEO because your product structure data is automatically assigned by {{ product.description }} so you can place it anywhere in the product template.
Though you say your product descriptions are exceptionally long, there isn’t anything wrong with that. Long product descriptions will be read both by your customers and Google. Creating quality content should be your top priority. Unless customers are telling you they are having difficulty understanding your products, and if your organic results are doing as well as you say, I’d be hesitant to make changes unless there is a really good reason.
The reason so many people have different opinions on this is that it often depends on how the accordions are coded. No one can tell you if it will hurt your store or not, because it depends on how you coded it.
A simple but not 100% reliable test, is to view the source code. From your home page (what the customer sees, not the admin), right-click and go to view source. Do a ctl+f to find content that is hidden in the accordion. If you can find it, Google can usually find it as well.
Additionally, you also have the issue of whether or not the accordion is considered accessible to screen readers. I often look at Google as a visually impaired customer. So if a screen reader can’t see or access the content behind the accordion, neither can Google.
If you add custom content outside of the product description in the admin, that would not be included in the structured data. Meaning, that if you use a custom template and from the theme customizer, add content via metafields, that’s not part of the standard description.
The same rules apply though. If that added content is visually on the page and in the HTML, it should be accessible. Google and other search engines are looking for the content to be accessible on the page, no matter how you get it there. Metafields and other content added outside of the product description can still be seen and indexed by Google, it’s just not part of your normal Shopfy product description, so it wouldn’t be added to the structured data as mentioned in another comment.
