Bad SEO – Hidden Text
With a phrase like ‘hidden text’, one’s immediate perception is certain to be negative however, there are many legitimate implementations of HTML, CSS and JavaScript where text is in fact ‘hidden’, but not for artificially boosting SEO.
Indeed without the ability to ‘hide’ text we could not have certain website elements which have themselves become an essential part of modern websites. Elements such as: Drop Down Menus, Pop-up Boxes or Sliding Boxes with forms or additional information.
What’s the Problem?
The problem is when webmasters take the same ‘hide’ coding/technology (that is used for Drop Down Menus and Sliding Boxes, etc) and use it to stuff in keyword rich content, with not even allowing users to see it! In other words its not even in an expandable box for the users to click on, it is completely invisible on the page (but only visible in the source code).
It is this method of ‘creating content only for search engines, which itself is not visible to users’ which can cause the website to be penalized for over-SEO.
Things to Avoid
In order to prevent getting penalized, the following is a list of hidden text techniques which you should avoid:
1) Stuffing keywords and gross amounts of text in image ‘alt’ attributes
2) Stuffing keywords and gross amounts of text in link ‘title’ attributes
3) Making multiple Title tags or Meta Description tags on one page.
4) Changing color of text to match the background, therefore blending it in. (Yes, people still do this)
5) Using CSS ‘display:none;’ to create containers of invisible text
6) Stuffing keywords and gross amounts of text in the Marquee tag
7) Using CSS to make boxes of text layer over each other, concealing the ones underneath.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the best rule of thumb regarding SEO is: “would you feel comfortable describing your actions to a website evaluator at Google”
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