Hi All - A longtime client hired another company to handle a complete business rebranding. Everything from graphics, to banners, business cards, etc. Included, was also a new website design (UX mainly - no new content other than graphics, but also changing domain - yeah, ouch) I have been involved 100% of the way to minimize the negative seo hit as much as possible.
Leaving everything else thats being changed off the table - the new design has a feature that I'm not sure how it will be viewed in SEO terms as it relates to mobile/desktop.
Desktop / Standard view - There are a series of horizontal tabs/divs that show/hide teaser product content based on click. Almost slider like functionality. Product 1 is shown automatically on page load, when you click on "Product 2", the div slides away and shows the next product. Rinse an repeat for the 8 products they sell. It works great and as expected and displays as follows on desktop:
[Product 1] [Product 2] [Product 3] [Product 4] [Product 5] [Product 6] [Product 7] [Product 8]
[Overview content displays here, based on the product tab you click - with a link to the product landing page]
Mobile / Responsive - I brought to their attention that on mobile devices, the UX was poor since the tabs stack up on top of each other. If a user on a phone for example clicked on "Product 2", they'd never actually see the content since it was hundreds of pixels below the viewport, as the other "Product" tabs, seen below:
[Product 1]
[Product 2]
[Product 3]
[Product 4]
[Product 5]
[Product 6]
[Product 7]
[Product 8]
[Overview content displays here, based on the product tab you click - with a link to the product landing page]
My suggestion to them was to either minimize the icon sizes so they fit better on mobile with 4 or all 8 on a single row, or to use a mobile jump-menu of sorts, allowing the user to choose and view. OR, to jump down to the anchor section of the div.
What they decided to do was replace the entire section with a link menu, that once below a specific screen size, css takes over and the tabbed divs go away completely (display:none), and instead of show/hiding the teaser content, the images are linked directly to the product pages.
[Link to Product 1] [Link to Product 2] [Link to Product 3] [Link to Product 4]
[Link to Product 5] [Link to Product 6] [Link to Product 7] [Link to Product 8]
What, if any, kind of effect is this going to have on SEO? It seems that losing several hundred words is going to have an effect, and I need to be able to put this into words if so.
Will it be viewed as a type of manipulation?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or opinion.
