questions about keywords and invisible text

[PicGuy]

Hi everybody.

I'm very new to web design and am in the process of useing dreamweaver to design a site to show some of my drawings and 3d work. So my site is made mostly of graphics.
I've done some reading about google and from what i've found it looks for text within the site and not for keyword tags or anything like that. I intend to have an "about me" page that will have a discription about me, of course, and what I do and what I would like to get a job in etc.. But my start page or "home page" will be a graphic with text in it but no actual font text. Can I use text the same color as the background , so its not viewable, on my homepage so google links to it not just my "about me" page or is this a bad idea? Is this considered spamming? Would I get banned?
Thanks

hope this isnt a stupid question :)

[skipfactor]

Hi, Welcome to WW,

It's against Google's (& any other SE I know of) guidelines & might fetch you a penalty. Further reading:

[google.com...]

[Go60Guy]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

This is one of the oldest tricks known to search engine optimization. Its not a dumb question, and part of your progress to ask it.

In the early days, it worked well. But, today, its universally prohibited by the search engines, and will probably be the quickest way to get your site banned.

[PicGuy]

Alright well that answers that. I dont mean to be misleading with any "hidden text" i just wanted people to start at the homepage i designed not at the "about me" page. Kinda picky but i liked the way my site was comeing together and horizontal text wouldnt work with the homepages design. Vertical text would be ok. Is there anyway to have vertical text that search engines will recognize as words instead of just individual letters. exp.

3
d

a
r
t

wouldnt googles bot/spider just read these as individual characters other than words? I'm useing DW's design feature to make this site and trying to learn code along the way so if there is code that will help me i am more than happy to learn.

Thanks and thanks for answering so quick

[CyberSorcerer]

Hello

Well, like they said above. Those were the good old days but today Google has gotten more complex with their search engine algo.

Here is what is taken in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry as what their algo is.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

in the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set at 0.85

Basically this means link popularity is VERY important now for you PR rating. Ranking high now involves more SEO Copyrighting, link text strategy, and other optimization to rank high. Like I said many years ago. When the internet starts growing, it will get more and more complex to do business on the internet.

No more centered pages on geocities as you business site... LOL

CyberSorcerer

[hannamyluv]

But my start page or "home page" will be a graphic with text in it but no actual font text.

Bad design. Even discluding SEO stuff, I shiver to think what the download for a dial up user would be. If it's a graphic with text, it can become a text with graphic easily enough. Do your homework as far as site building and avoid the print designer's method to building website. (Sing with me! Oh here a graphic, there a graphic. Everywhere a graphic, graphic. Old McPrint Designer had a site that was bad, bad, bad, bad, baaaaaaaad.)

I understand that you want to show your art, but lead them to it. Don't assult them with it on the first page as I will guaruntee you will have no one willing to wait for it.

[PicGuy]

I checked what the size of my homepage is and the properties said it was 1600 bytes. Is that large?

Oh and thanks again to everyone for helping me out with this stuff :)

[coverstory]

1,600 bytes is nothing, but that represents text. How massive is the image?