Misuse of CSS

SEO Black Hat Techniques: What NOT to do

What is CSS?

Cascading style sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style such as links, headers, colours, fonts, and text size to web documents. The application of different style sheets gives both website developers and users more control over how their pages are displayed.

Giving users a greater degree of control over presentation is very important for accessibility issues as it ensures that pages are homogenous. Building accessible layouts to screen readers, along with the ability to adjust the size or colour of the text can greatly assist users who have difficulties with their sight.

However, CSS is frequently used by less scrupulous webmasters in order to bring customers to their site that weren’t necessarily looking for their products or services.

Using CSS to hide text

In the early days of the web, the most common practice used to hide keywords stuffed in a document was white text on a white background. The CSS equivalent of this spamming technique, and equally as bad, is to ‘float’ words off the page. By placing the keyword stuffing at a coordinate that is off the visible page, a line of CSS can be used to hide words from the human eye whilst keeping them visible to search engines.

What are the risks?

Search engines can easily detect this malpractice via their algorithms. When discovered, they will penalise the website by downgrading its ranking in their lists, or sometimes even banning the entire site.

What is the solution?

Instead of trying to trick the search engines via the misuse of CSS or any other type of black hat technique, the best advice is to employ a professional SEO copywriter to write informative, content-rich copy with the appropriate use of keywords in context. This will result in naturally secured higher rankings in the search results, and will benefit the long-term development of your site.