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To elaborate - I want the user to be able to scroll down to just half way down the page. No further. This way there will be text on the webpage that the visitor has no way of seeing. (unless they look at the source code).
I'm not suggesting that anyone would actually do such a thing, but a webmaster might put a lot of keyword-rich word-salad at the bottom of a page.
Having virtually no value to the visitor, he may want to mask it off while leaving it visible to page crawlers/spiders. This would avoid penalties for (nearly) invisible text and similar devices.
If that becomes an issue, it wouldn't take a fleet of SE Ph.Ds to detect the strategem once it came to their attention.
Best - Larry
<div style="visibility:invisible; z-index:-1;"> all invisible #*$! </div>
BTW what do you think search engines read ..Shakespeare?
<div style="display:none;">
<p>Hidden text here.</p>
</div>However, don't be surprised if you get banned by the search engines for keyword-stuffing and hidden text. If the content isn't for your users, and it isn't for the search engines either, why keep it on the page at all?
Kaled.
Take a good hard look at whatever keyword-salad you had in mind. Reconstruct it into one or two sensible paragraphs that DO fit into your presentation, and might even add to the content-value of your page.
Then put it up for all to see. If visitors have to scroll down to see it, not an issue. At least you do not risk a big penalty.
If some desired KWs are NOT what your site is about, you could even say as much, using those same KWs, and still benefit. Arguably, this benefits some readers, since you save them time looking for stuff that simply isn't there.
- Larry
Basically instead of positioning the text off screen, or with visibility=none (which the SEs are likely to detect, eventually), simply have your footer "accidentally" in the same pixel height and width as the text.
I saw a site using 1px height for its keyword stuffing, but it might just be easier just to abs pos it -600px or something.
My hope is that it is a bit novel and so google wont be actively looking for it.
Don't hold your hopes up to high - Googlebot is already starting to fetch CSS and Javascript files, and is undoubtedly starting to understand both. Google are always actively looking for stuff like this.
It's your decision, of course: only you can decide whether the risk is worth it for you. But if you get banned, don't say we didn't tell you. ;)
Why would someone want to stuff their site with a bunch of words that have nothing to do with their site? I understand the concept of getting higher in the SEs, but why stuff with unrelated words?
I mean, if I'm Googling for "plastic blow-up sheep dolls" and I click on a link that takes me to "Carrots in your Garden", I'm probably less than pleased. That is an annoying waste of my time. I probably wouldn't deal with that vendor at all, even if later I wanted a product they sold. There are 1000's of others that are more reputable that sell the same thing.
Did I get that example right?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it possible to control scrolling with Javascript? Aside from the against-the-rules issues, couldn't you simply detect when the user scrolls past a certain point and then move their view up by, say, 10 pixels?
But cloaking, hidden text, and all that is pretty reprehensible anyway. Build your site around quality, and you'll get picked up. If you can't do that much, why do you think it's appropriate to trick people into coming to your site?
