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hidden text, external CSS, SEO?

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Apr 27.2006

I’m just curious…

If i’m trying to improve my keyword density, can I add keywords to the site, making the text the same color as the background if the style comes from an external style sheet? How would a crawler know that the text is the same color as the background if it doesnt say so in the html file? Can crawlers/robots even read CSS files? Is this making sense to anyone?

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SEO

11 Comments(s) ↴

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@JPnycApr 27.2006 — Wouldn't matter either way. Bots don't care about color formatting. They just read the text. You could hide the display altogether and bots will still "see" it.
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@15hoursNowauthorApr 27.2006 — this is in googles "Quality Guidelines"

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

[B]Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. [/B]

Don't send automated queries to Google.

Don't load pages with irrelevant words.

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. [/Quote]


Why would they say to Avoid hidden text if the bots wouldnt know it was hidden anyway?


Matt Cutt, a google employee also said in his blog:
I don’t recommend that people use CSS to hide text, and I don’t recommend that they document it, either.[/QUOTE]

I've seen and read numerous things online today that would suggest that some bots use algo's to determine whether text is being hidden or not. I just can't find any hard proof that they do or do not do that. :/
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@johnevaApr 27.2006 — It will work for so long but then you will just get banned.

If you value your site and dont want to get banned from the major search engines dont use black hat techniques such as hiden text.
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@NogDogApr 27.2006 — Doing the "hidden text" thing is very risky: if Google [i]does[/i] detect it, your whole site will likely get black listed and not show up on any searches. (And Google has a lot of talented programmers working there, so don't put it past them to have a way to detect it automatically.) Besides, the search ranking is much more complex than just "keyword density", which is only one part of the entire algorithm - and overloading a document with keywords may actually reduce their impact (again, those clever Google programmers at work).
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@15hoursNowauthorApr 27.2006 — well, i didnt want to "overload" it. I've been reading a lot about SEO and some of the things I've found said to try and place your keywords in the upper most left part of the page and the very bottom right of the page so your keywords are the first and last things read on the page. But, I can't find a desireable way to do it, so I thought I could just hide them there...its only like 3 words, but I'd rather not chance it I guess.
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@johnevaApr 27.2006 — well, i didnt want to "overload" it. I've been reading a lot about SEO and some of the things I've found said to try and place your keywords in the upper most left part of the page and the very bottom right of the page so your keywords are the first and last things read on the page. But, I can't find a desireable way to do it, so I thought I could just hide them there...its only like 3 words, but I'd rather not chance it I guess.[/QUOTE]

Then your reading the wrong SEO stuff.

Check out the other messages in this category to learn some good SEO techniques.

[URL=http://forums.digitalpoint.com/]This forum[/URL] is full of very talanted SEO experts a few weeks using this forum and you will learn so much.

As is [URL=http://forums.seochat.com/]this one[/URL].
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@coding2006Apr 28.2006 — dont do it. you will get so spammed.
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@johnevaApr 28.2006 — dont do it. you will get so spammed.[/QUOTE]

What do you mean?

You wont get spammed but you will be classed as spam by using hidden text in which case you will get banned from search engines.
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@_lt_Eddie_gt_May 08.2006 — From experience, hidden text does work and isn't detected as most tests suggest that only certain HTML attributes like ALT and TITLE are consumed and certainly not CSS [[I]flyout menus et all[/I]]. But...

Most people get greedy with this and hide things like:
<i>
</i>&lt;p style="display:none;"&gt;
digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera,
digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera,
digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera,
digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera, digital camera
&lt;/p&gt;
Google sweeps through and this smacks of abuse. Not to mention the keyword density renders the document apparently unreadable to a search engine.

If you then adjust the text to be more meaningful, you have to ask yourself, what's the point in hiding it? Write text for the users and write plenty of it. 200 words per page minimum. If this is [I]too much[/I] then that's where structure comes into play. Use appropriate headers, keep the boring stuff at the bottom of the page and the photos, features, benefits etc at the top. This makes it readable as well as content rich. Great, what Google wants.

Oh, and if Google does find out, either by auto detection [[I]unlikely but you never know for sure[/I]] or being snitched on then you will end up writing a reinclusion email to them. Failure to adhere to the quality guidelines is enough for them to delist you. Trust me, I've been there. I do all sorts of things to Google like pulling its legs off and trying to make it do what it doesn't like doing.
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@CrazyMerlinMay 16.2006 — I agree with Eddie!

I have used hidden text just to add a h1 to the start and end of a document and it makes all the difference.

If you want keyword density...write a damn article!!!

Articles are easy to write, you can then add links to the article that reference other sites, contact them and ask them to link back to you. Not all that many will do, but some will!

Then once a month...change the article!

You honestly will not believe how much a well written article can do for your site. Once people see it, if they like it they will link to it. And then you have the most important type of link...the inbound!
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@SeoDocJun 01.2006 — The article you read about the location of keywords is correct BUT not literally....you should place them within your CONTENT at the top, middle and bottom. Having randomly placed keyword phrases does not help that much and using hidden text is SO risky. SE's are working to detect it automatically but you also have to consider "competitors" turning you in with Google's easy to use spam report page.
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