Is tabbed content bad for SEO?

[TheaterMania]

I work for a Theater show listings and ticketing website. In our show listings pages (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/this-is-our-youth_302998/) we split our content into separate tabs (overview, pricing and show dates, cast, and video).

Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by separating the content? Are we better served with keeping it all in a single page?

Thanks so much!

[OlegKorneitchouk]

2-sided coin.

If you make it a single page, you will probably rank better for "This Is Our Youth" keywords overall.

However, if there is significant keyword traffic volume for "This Is Our Youth Videos" and "This Is Our Youth Cast", you might get better ranking by developing each of these pages out further (more content).

As they stand now, I recommend moving all the content onto one single page and make the tabbed navigation just scroll down to the appropriate part of the page.

[MonicaOConnor]

Take a look at this discussion:

http://moz.com/community/q/content-in-tabs

[OlegKorneitchouk]

In TheaterMania's case, each tab is a link to another page, not hidden divs.

[TheaterMania]

OK, thanks so much for your help.

Quick clarification - can you explain why it'd rank better if all the content were on a single page?

Cast names, for example, wouldn't be indexed under the keywords 'This is Our Youth.' I'm not following why combining cast content with show description, pricing, venue, etc. content would cause that page to rank higher for the 'This is Our Youth' query string.

[MonicaOConnor]

True, but if content in tabs aren't crawled neither are links in tabs. You would want those links crawled. I believe they will be crawled, but I also agree with you that the content should stay on one page.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

The overall value of the page increases.

1. You have more highly relevant content added to the page which improves the number of long tail keywords the page will rank for as well as improve the relevancy score for all "This Is Our Youth" related terms.

From a user perspective, if I wanted to see a show, I'd want to know who the cast is, see a video trailer/review and get venue info.

2. You keep the authority on that page instead of splitting off to several other subpages. This means more ranking power stays on the single page and it will rank better overall.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

In this case, tab = link styled like a tab using ul/li. nothing is hidden, just poor semantics for those in the industry. (i initially thought it was the same thing and was gonna link to one of the "content in hidden tabs gets less credit" posts that have been going around the past few days)

[Sheena_Schleicher]

I agree with Oleg's response. As it stands, I would have all of this content on one URL, then focus on building the authority of that page for all terms related to "This is our youth."

In general, tabbed content is not bad for SEO & is actually a great way to simplify/improve the UX of pages with a lot of content. I've been implementing this more & more lately, especially when consolidating multiple 'orphan SEO pages' to one or a few more valuable pages. You can do this a few ways:

• actual tabbed content (making sure all copy shows up in the text-only cache version of the page). Example: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-ipad-air-2-wi-fi16gb-silver/2881022.p?id=1219084308979&skuId=2881022
• tabbed navigation that looks like tabbed content, but are actually anchor links (or links within a page) that "scroll down to the appropriate part of the page." Example: http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-mini (see just below the fold).

My preference is to use the anchor links - with users getting more & more mobile, scrolling has become second nature.

I hope this helps!

[Discountvc]

It was always my understanding that Bots crawl the source page.

The content under tabs is (or should be) on the source page then, right?

This is generic, not particularly to the theater example. The theater example is not exactly a tab question. The tabs Theatermania is  questioning are in fact navigation, and link to a new page each.

Tabs function as headers, as Oleg referred in his first comment. So why are tabs 'bad' vs all on one page?

Can someone give me an SEO perspective on true tabs? We are in the middle of redoing our site. Don't want to make a mistake on something as simple as tabs.

Thanks guys!

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Check this: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html