Hi All, When discussing "ethics" in OUR industry you have to start with what our industry is about; It's about doing well in search engines, right? So with that in mind, using an H1 tag that is hidden from browsers and is not hidden from robots IS SPAM and consequently IS unethical. It's common sense.

But anyway; I can't tell you the many times a web designer out there is doing something like this but has NO idea of the consequences of being caught. Zero idea. They don't even know it's called se spam, but are doing it because they felt it may help the site do better in the se's. Of course we all know that spam might not be found for awhile, but eventually it gets caught..... by someone or something. In this case; by weslinda from in here.

Danny Sullivan knew nothing about this. As we know however; each owner is responsible for their own sites. Just like if "my" designer redesigned my site,... which they did recently, and others found this type of spam on it.... DO NOT LOOK please. LOL Everyone out there would be giving me the dickens because I was spamming. Oh yes; I knew nothing of it, but oh yes, it's my fault. It's mainly my fault because I didn't teach my designers the "right" way to do things.

NOPE. Danny had no clue and he stated as such. Kudos to him for acknowledging it and fixing it.

But is that spam? Heck yes it is. Is it unethical? Heck yes it is. We as owners and webmasters have to abide by the stated guidelines set forth by "each" se. EACH se states that hidden text is spam with this type of application. Let there be no mistake out there; Using a hidden H1 tag, for whatever the reason is search engine spam.