Content Tabs for Thin Pages

[petra]

What are your thoughts on utilizing search friendly tabs on pages with thin content to add more useful information and make the pages richer.

e.g. a jobs site with the latest list of jobs in a certain city, adding a search friendly tab that says more info about the finding a job in said city, including links to resources, etc.

The default view of the page is the jobs listing but the user has the option to click on the "more info" tab to read more about the said city and get more information and resources about settling in said city, etc.

Will this be seen as cloaking?

Thoughts much appreciated...

[petra]

There's an interesting discussion on it here:

[stackoverflow.com...]

Any insights, experiences in this area?

[martinibuster]

A way to tackle thin content is to add useful content that is not seen on other sites. I was impressed with a site that is doing this successfully by using local search type information, including phone numbers and whatnot. The information is truly useful and helpful.

I've had good success for well over a decade using that approach myself.

[JesterMagic]

A quote from the stackoverflow link:

Matt Cutts from Google has talked about this on his blog and basically he says you shouldn't use display:none; to hide content as it is considered a form of cloaking

I haven't heard this before but it makes some sense.

I was actually thinking of tabs for the opposite reason. I have a number of pages loaded with content and I was thinking of ways to split it up so it is easier for users and hopefully more friendly for the search engines.

For now I have just implemented jump links but I was considering tabs (either by hiding divs on one page or as actual separate pages).

[Sand]

I use tabbed content successfully on one of my sites.

The 'trick' -- if you want to call it that -- is not to hide your divs through CSS. Rather, use jQuery (or your js library of choice) to only display a div when a certain tab is selected.

Also, if a client has javascript disabled, you should make sure that the tabbed navigation is disabled and the entire contents of the page are shown at once.

[petra]

Brilliant, many thanks all this is very comforting. I guess the bottom line is that the content has to be really useful and that it is displayed in a way so as not to give GG the wrong impression.

Thanks for all your input and experience...

Love this site!

More insights, ideas, experiences welcomed...