Hidden Text? Part of the game or a major faux pas?
-
Hey all...
I've been doing some competitive analysis lately on different niches in different cities, and upon looking at source code have noticed MANY sites(typically 2-3 of the top listed sites in each niche) who have hidden text, blocked by a box/logo, colored the same as the background, or both.
Is this a typical practice?
My understanding is Google seriously frowns on this, so is it worth reporting competitors who are doing such things?
I don't see any grey areas in this matter and think it's a serious violation, but here these sites are at the top.
-
Major No-No.
Most likely they will eventually be found out and knocked down. It is painful to wait for that day to occur, I know. Just write more and better content
-
With a few of the sites I am thinking of, they have done an excellent job with SEO and the site actually looks great.
They have done hidden text in ADDITION to all the best practices which seems to have put them over the top.
Two sites in particular, with hidden text, have not been punished in over two years. Go figure.
-
Oy.... this is not good at all. I understand why people do this, but I don't understand how they sleep at night knowing this just isn't ethical. Funny part is, if they got their content in place properly they wouldn't have to resort to these sorts of practices anyway.
-
Major faux pas, never part of the game.
It's definitely a serious violation and at some point there will be a penalty for it. It will arrive in a spam workers list of sites to go through some when, and they'll see it and slap it. There's just not enough spam workers for that to be fast, and maybe it hasn't been reported enough or even at all to get into their lists yet.
It's too much of an old trick to ever work, and keyword density, etc... doesn't do squat now anyway so there's no point.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Linking to own homepage with keywords as link text
I recently discovered, that previous SEO work on a client's website apparently included setting links from subpages to the homepage using keywords as link text that the whole website should rank for. i.e. (fictional example) a subpage about chocolate would link to the homepage via "Visit the best sweet shop in Dallas and get a free sample." I am dubious about the influence this might have - anybody with any tests? I also think that it is quite weird when considering user friendliness - at least I would not expect such a link to take me to the homepage of the very site I was just on, probably browsing in a relevant page. So, what about such links: actually helpful, mostly don't matter or even potentially harmful? Looking forward to your opinions! Nico
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Opt-in Form as Hidden Text - what do you think?
Hi All, I have at least 2 website that have opt-in form that isn't visible all the time (cookie related). Also, the thank you message will appear (obviously) only after signing in. Here how it looks like: Sign up to receive exclusive updates and special offers Congratulations on joining our email list!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoperad
You will be the first to know about exciting news, red carpet updates, special offers, and much more. There seems to be a problem with a signup. Please try again later. What do you think? It may penalize my website or do you find it legit?0 -
Novice Question - Can Browsers realistically distinguish words within concatenated strings e.g. text55fun or should one use text-55-fun? What about foreign languages especially more obscure ones like Finnish which Google Translate often miss-translates?
I am attempting to understand what is realistically possible within Google, Yahoo and Bing as they search websites for KeyWords. Technically my understanding is that they should be able to distinguish common words within concatenated strings, although there can be confusion between word boundaries when ambiguity is involved. So in the simple example of text55fun, do search engines actually distinguish text, 55 and fun separately? There are practical processing, databased and algorithm limitations that might turn a technically possible solution into a unrealistic one at a commercial scale. What about more ambiguous strings like stringsstrummingstrongly would that be parsed as string s strummings trongly or strings strummings trongly or strings strumming strongly? Does one need to use dashes or underscores to make it unambiguous to the search engine? My guess is that the engine would recognize the dash or space and better understand the word boundaries yet ignore the dash or underscore from an overall concatenated string perspective. Thanks in advance to whoever can provide any insight to an old coder who is new to this field.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ny600 -
CSS Display None / Hidden? Will I get in Trouble?
Hi, We're integrating over a dozen of videos to the site to be featured in a slideshow manner. A selected video will be featured in the center of the page, meanwhile the user can click on the small thumbnails and change it to something else. For the selected videos, there will be a transcript shown right next to the video. The trick is, we cant show the transcripts for all the videos at once, since that's just bad user experience - the page will be miles long. We want to hide the transcripts for the videos which are not shown either in a div - or in some other Google friendly manner. The question is? Is this Google - legit? Is there a chance of being flagged, since so much content will be hidden?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sophia1231 -
Anchor Text to Content Ratio
My Home Page has about 500 words of content, but when I crawl the text it brings up about 1400 total words when counting all the anchor text links (I believe all are in the navigation or images). All of the link are internal and relevant (it's a huge site), but I am worried that they are diluting the copy. Is that likely the case? What's a good ratio? Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NathanArizona0 -
Does Google read texts when display=none?
Hi, In our e-commerce site on category pages we have pagination (i.e toshiba laptops page 1, page 2 etc.). We implement it with rel='next' and 'prev' etc. On the first page of each category we display a header with lots of text information. This header is removed on the following pages using display='none'. I wondered if since it is only a css display game google might still read it and consider duplicated content. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Internal Anchor Text - Partial or Exact Match Does It Matter?
When linking internally on an ecommerce site between pages and from a sitemap, is partial or exact match on the anchor text a significant factor? If it matters to Google, which is a better practice to use? I found plenty of info on external links, but precious little on internal links (which suggests it doesn't matter enough to worry about).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Two links from one page with different Anchor text
Example Business Name - UberPuter UberPuter targets the keywords "Computer Repairs" right from their home page. UberPuter has the option to place links on 150 of their customers pages that are happy with the service. Would it be best to place two anchor text links one with the brand name and one with the keyword anchor text in "computer repairs" pointing both at the home page or should UberPuter only place one link back to the home page for the Keyword Anchor text? To the best of my knowledge G only counts the first link on a page as a "Vote" so my thought is to only include the single link with the keyword anchor text. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0