Dot (.) Link - How to create?

How to create dot link in order to add hidden text?

[sweetu]

Hi,

My client site is totally built in flash & they dont want to add visible text on their website. The next option was to create hidden text or to create a dot link through CSS. I don't have the knowledge of what is a (.) link & how to insert text in the same. Can anybody help me how to do this, as this idea was given to me by the client. Any details on this will be helpful.

[topr8]

no idea what you mean by (.) link, unless you want to use the dot as an anchor, your options are ...

use noscript tags

use css: display none attribute

[topr8]

or use layers and put the text in a layer BELOW the flash movie

[g1smd]

Sounds like you want a have a link where the anchor text is just a full stop. That will make it all but invisible to people viewing the page.

Be aware that search engines usually see this as being blatent spam, so it could end up causing you a lot of grief. I'd say it was a bad idea.

[createErrorMsg]

Question: if they don't want text on the page, exactly what purpose does your client see this link serving? (If this sounds like a naive question, it isn't. I think it's important that we know the intentions involved, rather than just assuming.)

cEM

[sweetu]

They want to have text for SEO purpose but dont want to spoil the design of the page, so asked to add a .link, in first place I don't know what it is. I think it is as "g1msd" said above. I'm finding it very confusing, what it is & how to do this?

[createErrorMsg]

If it's a period (.) that acts as a link, I can't see how this would add any SEO text to the page. The link text that SE spiders like so much is the actual text of the link, as in the text that sits between the <a></a> tags. If you made a period a link...

<a href="#">.</a>

...the only text between the tags is the period, which means you'd have just optimized your page to show up in the SERPs for searches on (.), probably not what they're after.

text for SEO purpose but dont want to spoil the design of the page

This is really the primary reason against all Flash designs. Any method youcould use to "stuff" text onto tht page without it being seen by viewers would be considered black hat, spamming/cloaking techniques. We tend to shy away from discussing the "how to" of such activities on this board.

My suggestion is to search on ways to make Flash content spiderable. I recall reading a few recent articles about ways to get some SE's to spider Flash, and those without the technology to do so (like Google) to at least reach through the Flash and spider pages linked to it.

I've also seen plenty of Flash sites that (smartly) create a non=Flash version that is both accessible to users without the Flash player (or that don't wish to use the weighty, often slow, Flash version of a site) and to SE spiders. This is certainly a smarter and better option than stuffing hidden text into the page.

cEM

[nigassma]

From what I've read the best SEO comes from the way your site get's linked to and from other sites. But the SEO convo is probably better left for the proper forum.

[sweetu]

Hi createErrorMsg,

Even I'm against spamming techniques & never recommend them to my client. Since this was done by one of their old SEO firm they were insisting to do the same & had no idea of what it is? So I asked you guys to help me understand this technique. They themselves has a very vague idea of what it is. The only thing which I got from them them was a dot link through css.

[nigassma]

are you talking about a class?

[nemanja]

I do it like this:

css code:
span.hide{display:none;}

xhtml code:

<span class="hide">
You can put your text here. And use links.
<a href="http://domain.com/folder/file.html" title="">text</a>
</span>

[sonjay]

So.... they're asking you to put something on their page that they don't even know what it is, but it's supposed to be invisible?

What's stopping you from just telling them, "Okay, I've added a dotlink to your site.... What do you mean, where is it? It's on the page.... Of course you can't see it -- It's invisible, that's what dotlinks are!"

[nigassma]

"Okay, I've added a dotlink to your site.... What do you mean, where is it? It's on the page.... Of course you can't see it -- It's invisible, that's what dotlinks are!"

That's a good laugh to lead into a lunch break. If only it were that easy.

[topr8]

go to the wayback machine and get an old copy of one of their pages (that had this technique applied to it) and look at the source code from this you should be able to see what they are talking about.

although with flash using layers with a text version behind the flash movie is the way to go like i mentioned before.

[Pixelgamer]

Nigassma, why couldnt it be as simple as just to trick them? Or what is the meaning of those dot links? I mean if you are gonna do something invisible, which you dont know what it is, and what it does, why do it? Do your client even know what it's gonna do, why they want it?

[tedster]

I'd suggest showing the client these two Google references:

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

[google.com...]

If features such as Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser,
then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site. You may want to
consider creating HTML copies of these Flash pages for our crawler.

[google.com...]