Hidden Text or Links

SEO Black Hat Techniques: What NOT to do

What are hidden text/links?

Hidden text or links are one of the oldest forms of spam still operating on the internet. In this spamming technique, text (such as excessive keywords) or links, are managed in such a way as to be invisible to the naked eye, but visible to the search engine spiders by showing up in the html code.

There are several ways to hide text, including the use of white text on a white background, placing text behind an image, reducing the font size to 0, and using CSS (cascading style sheets).

Hidden links are designed to be crawled by the spiders but unreadable to humans. Examples include links consisting of hidden text (for example, using the same colour for the text and the background), using CSS to make hyperlinks as tiny as one pixel high, or hiding the link within a character, such as a hyphen, in the middle of a sentence.

What are the risks?

The problem with hiding text or links in a site is that search engines will only be fooled for a certain amount of time. If your site is considered to contain either hidden text or links that are intentionally deceptive, it may be removed from the search engine indexes and will not be included in search results pages.

Google advises that if you do find hidden text or links on your site, you should either delete them or, if they’re helpful or relevant for your site's visitors, change them so they’re visible.

What is the best solution?

By presenting different information to search engines than to visitors your website will be perceived to be untrustworthy. All the tricks in the world cannot make customers return to a bad site. Even if a web builder manages to work their way to the top of the rankings, the site has gained nothing if the traffic does not stay to buy. Conversions are much more important than traffic numbers, as it’s sales you want to achieve at the end of the day.

However, if your site contains good copy produced by an experienced freelance writer, customers will return again and again. This will result in the site receiving a natural, long-term boost instead of a temporary one obtained by trying to deceive the search engines.