E-mail List Archives
Thread: Neative effects on SEO from placing "Skip to content" links on top of a page
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 12:39AM
Subject: Neative effects on SEO from placing "Skip to content" links on top of a page
No previous message | Next message →
Yea wise people
I gave a 90 innue presentation on accessibility yesterday, with some
success I believe. It was very entertaining and, I hope, enligtening,
as 200 students were in the audience.
Afterwards I had a talk with the professor, who is doing web
development himself.
He said he has issues with putting "Skip to content" links on top of
his pages, as he had heard it will negatively affect the ranking of
the page in SEO, since the SEO will see that as the first element of
said page.
I have read the ecellent blog post on accessibility and SEO on the
WebAIM blog, but nothing is mentioned about it there.
Is there a witty reort I can provide to this, or is there some truth to it?
Thank you
-B
From: subhash chhetri
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 1:48AM
Subject: Re: Neative effects on SEO from placing "Skip to content" links on top of a page
← Previous message | Next message →
On 9/28/11, Birkir R. Gunnarsson < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Yea wise people
>
> I gave a 90 innue presentation on accessibility yesterday, with some
> success I believe. It was very entertaining and, I hope, enligtening,
> as 200 students were in the audience.
> Afterwards I had a talk with the professor, who is doing web
> development himself.
> He said he has issues with putting "Skip to content" links on top of
> his pages, as he had heard it will negatively affect the ranking of
> the page in SEO, since the SEO will see that as the first element of
> said page.
> I have read the ecellent blog post on accessibility and SEO on the
> WebAIM blog, but nothing is mentioned about it there.
> Is there a witty reort I can provide to this, or is there some truth to it?
> Thank you
> -B
>
From: Chris Heilmann
Date: Wed, Sep 28 2011 2:33AM
Subject: Re: Neative effects on SEO from placing "Skip to content" links on top of a page
← Previous message | Next message →
> I can't say too much about this, but the fact is that SEO works on the
> basis of meta description. So far "Skip navigation" is concerned it is
> simple coding which facilitate user to jump to specific content. It is
> only a method of linking two different content of same page. In my
> opinion it is not right to say this coding puts negative effect in
> site ranking.
>
Wow, search engines gave up on caring about meta elements other than the
title a long time ago - that is a very outdated idea. The description is
still shown in the search result page and I guess this is where the
gripe of the professor comes from.
Skip links (unless you create dozens of them which doesn't make any
sense) do not affect SEO. Also, if you use CSS to position your menu and
have your content first in the document then they become much less needed.
From: Rowan
Date: Wed, Oct 05 2011 1:09PM
Subject: Re: Neative effects on SEO from placing "Skip to content" links on top of a page
← Previous message | No next message
Yes, Chris is spot on.
Even from a link-popularity point of view, it's link to an on page anchor,
so wouldn't be detrimental.
However, how about: "Skip to content about Texas Hold 'em, Cialis and
mesothelioma"? Arguably even more accessible, and keyword stuffing with
built-in plausible deniability. ;)
<snip>
> I can't say too much about this, but the fact is that SEO works on the
> basis of meta description. So far "Skip navigation" is concerned it is
> simple coding which facilitate user to jump to specific content. It is
> only a method of linking two different content of same page. In my
> opinion it is not right to say this coding puts negative effect in
> site ranking.