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I have an SEO working on my site. One of the tactics he uses is hidden text. When I told him to remove this because I had heard that hidden text can be dangerous and get you barred he replied that the type of hidden text he was using was OK.
He said that he is using the format:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"><P STYLE="COLOR:#000000;">This is some nice hidden text</P>
instead of:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"><P><FONT COLOR="#000000">This is some nasty hidden text</FONT></P>
</BODY>
If you use this inline style command to do your hidden text is this acceptable to the search engines?
Cheers
James
They may just penalise you, or even worse they may kick your site of their index, not worth it and neithers your SEO. IMHO :)
Craig
<added>Read searchengineworld and all the threads you can get your hands, on then you'll be laughing as you can have a go at it yourself</added>
Cheers
he replied that the type of hidden text he was using was OK
Bold face, complete down right... RUBBISH!
...and Nick_W would be somwhat bolder! ;)
Craig
Back to the drawing board - the search for a reputable SEO continues...
Thanks guys...
You have obviously learned that "hidden" required further investigation, and with the board at your disposal (and some dedicated reading time) I suspect that you could produce some exceptional work.
Pay yourself. In the end exceptional SEO'ers costs exceptionally.
I'm of the opinion that anyone who comes into your site and can work on it for a week and then move on isn't using good SEO techniques, but rather is using SEO tricks. There's just so much more to it. (For example, he's optimizing for a set of keywords - but are those the right keywords? A month from now you might realize that something else would produce better - you want to pay him to come back and "spammify" your pages again?)
If you don't have the time yourself, find a neighborhood kid who will send out a few e-mails a week asking for link exchanges, change a few words on the page here and there, play with <B> and <H> tags on a few pages, etc. That kid, because you're giving him $20 a week or whatever, will have your interests in mind rather than his own. You'll have to supervise and teach him a bit, but it's better than your current alternative.
G.
One common deficiency in the SEO game is that many view your site and potential markets completely as keywords and keyphrases and develop the SE potential 100% from this position.
SE technology take presidence over marketability (marketing to the visitors).
The fact that you already know your current customer's interests and concerns means that you are 10 flow ahead of most SEO professionals who, if they are worth the price place heavy importance on research to understand the habits of your customers and potential visitors.
A fisherman generally can't sell cars as good as he can catch fish, and an outside SEO professional must learn to know what you already know to be highly effective.
Remembering that the search (in time) is very, very short when compared to developing a trusting relationship.
The FIND is more important than the SEARCH......the SEARCH only creates the FIND
...the bulk of emphasis must be placed on the visitor and not the potential visitor.
If you must use hidden text, and I wouldn't personally, at least do it right.
<p class="innocentterm">some hidden text</p>
and in your EXTERNAL style sheet:
.innocentterm {
display: none;
}
I agreee with fathom (hey, I'm not that bad fathom! ;)) and Grumpus. DIY: we'll all be happy to pitch in ;)
Nick
I agreee with fathom (hey, I'm not that bad fathom! ) and Grumpus. DIY: we'll all be happy to pitch inNick
Oh yeah... the moderators even noticed that forked tongue on the previous "rubbish"! ;)
RUN!
Hidden text was maybe ok back in 1999. Sounds like this guy is leading in the wrong direction
I've used this (sparsely), do I have to remove such things?
But some sites rank very highly with invisable text, thing is, they tend not to do so for very long!
That's the issue, it appears to the bot that you have more content related to the subject, which, you don't. Rather than add invisible text, why not create content that is visible and useful to the end user.
I don't report spam, but many folks have jumped on the report spam bandwagon and invisible text is so incredibly easy to spot that you're just aksing for someone to report it.
I haven't seen a site yet that needed invisible text to rank well.
Visible text is important, and hidden element attributes like: "tool tips" and "image alts" where hidden until a mouseover (or image isn't available) will produce that "little more importance".
You can only say something so many times before Google start depreciating the weight factor of an associated term (keyword/keyphrase).
Having experimented with this significantly... "on page" information will carry you only so far, and without applying all the other "off-page" attributes to increase your relevancy (e.g. - links with keyword/keyphrase in the link anchor, etc.) to support the page, you will start dropping in SERP's like a rock.
This isn't a theory... it's fact!.
Totally invisible text for the specific purpose of "bot manipulation" manipulates the wrong way... DOWN! ;)
Based on my previous points of element attributes -- I welcome anyone to prove this otherwise.
Play by the rules, google's rules.
[google.com...]
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
He moves on to con the next client, you face the consequencies. There is no sensible alternative, give him the boot now.
