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I have a web design where a elements looks exactly like p elements. Pages may have many links so I want the links to look similar to normal text for readability reasons. Does this affect SEO in any manner?
p {
color: #000;
font-size: 14px;
font-family: Arial;
font-weight: normal;
}
a {
text-decoration: none;
color: #000;
font-size: 14px;
font-family: Arial;
font-weight: normal;
}
Google state that if you fail to distinguish your links then "your content becomes less useful". So, if your aim in SEO is to provide useful content, then yes - it can affect SEO.
Google's SEO best practices specifically state that you should :
Format links so they're easy to spot Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.
Page 17
This is from Google ...
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide
Do:
Format links so they're easy to spot
Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.
Avoid:
Using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text.
It does not affect to SEO only if you're using for legit purpose.
Bad practice always heart SEO, it does not about whether you got penalize or not.
For example, you got chance to write some article on quality website, but you're placing links with inline CSS so moderator don't see it, then it is consider as bad practice. But if you do for legit purpose then it will not heart, just make sure you don't manipulate them.
You should note that all links does not add same value, links that are useful for users may pass more value than others. For example header pass more value then body links, and body links pass more value than footer links.
It's all about whether it is useful for users or not. Google may treat all links same at this time, but once they got understand your site, they may treat them separately.
My personal advice is use some hover effect or use underline text decoration style in links.
It'll not affect seo. At least as long as you don't try to make some(black hat stuff) links invisible (font color the same as background color) .
h1white on a white background so it looks invisible for example. And using this solution was a UX optimisation since the page have many many links, imagine a link every 3-4 words. It was designed in a way that people have to hover the word/sentence to check if it have a link when they want to now more about this word/sentence...