Layers and Search Engines

[webboy1]

Can anyone tell me what effects Layers have with search engines? i.e. is the HTML bodytext within a layer picked up the same as the body text in the rest of the page?

Any general thoughts RE Layers and SE's would be much appreciated.

Regards

webboy

[papabaer]

Hello webboy! Yes, text in "layers" (Macromedia/Dreaweaver's colloquialism), or "divs" is parsed the same as normal body text.

One possible advantage is that with "divs," you can use position:absolute to strategically disperse your content.

Even though you may have a "left-hand menu" and a sizeable "header," you can still have your important body text appear at the top of your body/content (in your page code) allowing your "keyword-rich" copy preferrential placement.

[Purple Martin]

papabaer, you seem to know about these things so I'll ask for a bit more info: if I put some extra text with plenty of keywords in a hidden layer at the top of the body/content, will it get ignored, will it improve my SE results, or will I get slammed for spamming?

[papabaer]

Hiding text in a hidden "layer" or <div> or anywhere else on your page is an open invitation for T.R.O.U.B.L.E. !!!

Thanks for asking me personally... but you will find all regular visitors to WebmasterWorld are pretty knowledgeable about most every topic... just ask any of us! Will all swear it's true! ;)

Egos? We don't need no stinking egos!

Come on over to the Search Engine Forums to learn more regarding "hidden" text. Try the Google forum - It's a great place to start!

[webmasterworld.com...]

[papabaer]

PM, forgetting about "hidden text" for just a moment... Keywords and keyphrases lose their power if "stuffed" or over-used.

The goal should be "clarity." Convey the meaning of your page without muddying the waters. Too much clutter and your message is lost. Too many variations of your topic, and your "point" is lost.

Keep each page contained to a particular topic, item or concept and you will never even need to consider tactics that will bring you nothing but grief.

Here is the link to Brett's classic: Successful Site in 12 Months. [webmasterworld.com...]

Read it, study it, follow it. It's how it all begins!

Here is a link to an earlier discussion regarding HIDDEN TEXT: [webmasterworld.com...]

Do a site search (top of the page) for many more threads regarding this topic.

The answers will not leave you guessing... Hidden text is bad.

[Purple Martin]

Cool, thanks very much papabaer! :)

From a very quick skim Brett's topic looks great, and the other SE topics look very useful too.

The thing is, now I'm terrified - it looks as though it's so easy to accidentally get blocked by innocently doing something bad without knowing that it was bad. I'll be reading Brett's and other people's SE topics very carefully before my next site goes up. Thanks again!

[toolman]

Negative layers were the bomb a year ago....works like a charm until the whiney people show up with their shiney, anti-spam police badges on.

[JayCee]

I'm starting to experiment with div tag positioning of text and love the power!

But what about the joys of cross-browser rendering?

Setting the height of my (rendered) target table cell extra tall can account for the 20px or so vertical difference I see between MSIE 5.5 or NN6.1 Vs NN6.0. But NN4+ just renders the text between my div tags at its true position right under the body tag, messing up my whole page layout. I REALLY don't want to have to get into browser sniffing.

Any ideas?

And BTW, I don't know a method to run more than one MSIE version on my Win2K Pro production system for reviewing pages. Does the semi-mythical web site where you can try pages in all major browsers for free actually exist?

Sure learning a lot of hot stuff here!
Many thanks to everyone...

[tedster]

Negative layers? Whatever are you talking about? Oh, that ;)

Yes, I may have a few clean-up projects to finish before the authorities arrive.

I'm getting better at making human readable divs that have a similar effect, but it's not nearly as much fun as being underhanded.

[tedster]

> But NN4+ just renders the text between my div tags at its true position right under the body tag, messing up my whole page layout.

Netscape 4 is pretty good with CSS positioning. I've created several different positioned layouts that work in NN4, as long as I stay away from the value "right". "Float" is also a bit dicey.

One big problem - turn off JavaScript in NN4 and styles vanish as well.

[JayCee]

>Netscape 4 is pretty good with CSS positioning.

I should have been more specific. The problem is with Netscape 4.07. Which just renders the layer text at it's actual page position, instead of where my code tells it to go.

Any idea what's wrong anyone?

My layer inline code (just below the body tag) is like:
-----------
<div id="LayerName" style="position:absolute; width:360px; height:1-px; z-index:1; left:200px; top:1200px"><h1><b>Keyword1</b> other text</h1></div>
------------
The layer rendering position IS a long way down the page (last content above an "included" contact/copyright table).

The H1 tag is defined in an external CSS file.
This works fine in MSIE 5.5, NN 6.0 and NN6.1.

Thanks...

[BlobFisk]

<div id="LayerName" style="position:absolute; width:360px; height:1-px; z-index:1; left:200px; top:1200px"><h1><b>Keyword1</b> other text</h1></div>

Your top is set to 1200px which is why it's so far down the page.... :)

Also, watch the 1-px value on your height....

[JayCee]

Thanks blobfish:
Opps! on that 1px, I changed it to 30px.

The text IS supposed to render near page bottom, so 1200px IS correct. What I was saying [or meaning ;)] was that this large vertical distance from the top-of-page was probably why there is a 20+ px vertical difference between NN6.0 and NN6.1.

My REAL problem is dealing with NN4 ("Communicator 4.07 Standard Edition" is my test version). As I posted above, NN4 renders the text where the code is, not at the pixel position in the code. Actually, since I changed the "1px" to "30px", NN4 just locks up - but I haven't checked THAT out yet).

Anybody know of a way to keep the layer code away from NN4 and other old browsers (without duplicate pages and browser sniffing)? Like some kind of inline "filter" code?

I tried putting the Div tags inside HTML comment tags and that just turns it off - which is good to know.

Anyone?