CSS font size obfuscation again.

[lavapies]

Hi folks,

One of my competitors uses the following technique to achieve a high PR rating on Google. Do we think this is acceptable or not? Any comments appreciated.

A table at the top of the page lists all desired key phrases in H1 tags that have been styled with css to be fairly small. These phrases are all links to real pages within the site.

This table of course looks horrible, so they have it placed in a <no script> tag so that it can only be seen by people who've turned javascript off in their browsers (which accounts for almost nobody apart from webmasters and other people in the know!)

So, since the content is not strictly hidden (in that it can be seen when javascript is turned off), is this SPAM?

I have to say I find it incredibly frustrating how many of my competitors (we compete for design services in a small region of the UK) are using these kind of techniques to get way high rankings, and they never seem to be sniffed out.

I don't want to turn to the dark side and start using these techniques myself, but I have to admit it's tempting when all my competitors get away with it continuously.

I need moral support. Please help :-)

[Brett_Tabke]

Why do you think that has anything at all to do with his rankings?

[lavapies]

Becasue he is including a huge group of key phrases in H1 tags which link to other pages in his site. Also, apart from this, his pages are seemingly unoptimised, so I can't see any other reason. He also doesn't have many inbound links - hence my conclusion.

Also from reading other posts many people seem to think that Title, Description, and H1 H2 tags etc are considered highly by Google.

That's what I thought anyway, .. oh yeh, and all the other pages in his site are low PR. Any further comments appreciated. Thanks

[lavapies]

Brett,

Sorry I just realised maybe my initial post caused some confusion, as I see you've changed the post title to css font size issue, which is not really the main issue I was trying to highlight.

What bothered me was the heavy repetition of keyphrases enclosed within a <no script> tag, all of which phrases were enclosed in a <H1> tag also.

Now because these phrases (when javascript is turned off) are still visible to the user, I was wondering if it could still be considered to be spam.

Hope that makes it clearer :-) Thanks

[Brett_Tabke]

Well, if we are talking Google, you could get just a few more links and beat his rankings. On the page stuff doesn't count much if the pr value isn't there. You can't keyword spam your way to the top on Google unless it's a minor search.

[MHes]

Lavapies

I agree he is spamming, and at the moment succeeding. I am surprised because if the h1 tag is modified too much and the font size ends up the same as the body text it should be detected. Also too much h1 should also trigger a spam alarm.

Lets hope your post gets noticed ;)

[lavapies]

Thanks Mhes and Brett,

yeh I hope it gets noticed too :-)

And Brett.. I agree about the impossibility of making the top with keywords alone (especially after all the great posts I've read in here on the subject) .. unfortunately it is a minor search I'm concentrating on, as we are a small regional company.

Anyway, I'll remain on the straight and narrow and hope my optimisation gets somewhere in the end :-)

Thanks for the replies

[Antimorph]

From what you say its clearly a device used by the webmaster to positively influence his ranking. The fact that we're talking minor search doesn't make it any less significant for small town or niche player who doesn't have world domination on the brain. Whether or not its right to restrict yourself geographically is your concern. Hell why not beat him at his own game and throw a few craftily positioned <divs\> to mask off even more key phrases :)

[andy04031]

Antimorph
this is exactly why we shouldn't do this - you step into their league and this is the league that pisses off the search engines always. Stay clean and try to beat him with "legal stuff".

Tony