Invisible layers

[mawells]

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but I'm getting desperate. One of my sites has been indexed by Google, but Google seems to be having some problems reading the page content. The one line description available on almost every page is "Leaders in Precision Molding" - that's all that shows under the title tag even though there is a description meta tag that contains content from the body of the document.

Now, that line "Leaders in Precision Molding" is the content of a layer that appears on every page (it's their slogan) and it picks up the content from the home page (also a layer), but the inside pages are tables with that one layer on top.

My question is, "Do you think I could put an invisible layer on the inside pages that contains the body content of the page for Google to index or will they consider that spam?"

[adore]

Putting invisible layers is always regarded as spam - as soon as Google recognizes it, you can be baned. It can be reported to Google by your competitors as well.
When talking about description appearing under the title in results, it depends on what keyowrd you are looking for - google tries to present these parte of text, which contain your keyword from the query.

[mawells]

I knew that of course, but I needed to hear it again from someone. It seems that so many spam sites are getting high rankings at Google these days, you begin to wonder.

I wasn't searching under any keywords for this site, I was just using the "site:gwplastics.com" command to ensure that the entire site had been indexed. Perhaps the descriptions will be different if I searched on a keyword phrase - unfortunately their site doesn't come up under any keyword phrases except "GW Plastics."

[adore]

Using spam techniques is risky in long-term approach - there's always a chance you will be recognized and banned.
You must ask yourself if it's worth risking and get high rankings in short term or to achieve good and stable position in long term. IMHO the second one is much better. Take in mind that future algo updates can affect more sites using spamming than others.

With "GW plastics" I got following description:
"GW Plastics is recognized as a leader and innovator in precision injection molding. ... GW
Plastics excels at precision molding intricate thermoplastic parts. ..."
Which is quite good.

[mawells]

Yes, that's the description on their home page. It appears that it's the only page that actually has a nice description on it (it's designed using only layers). Interior pages (designed with tables with a layer over it) simply have "Leader in Precision Molding..." (the content of the layer in front of the table). We were forced to use this method for these pages for proper viewing is some older browsers (IE5, for instance).

I agree with you. As a professional SEO firm we can't afford to risk getting any of our clients' sites banned no matter how much pressure our clients put on us.

[mawells]

Oh, my gosh. I just did a search at Google for gw plastics +"injection molding." Take a look at the cached pages of the first 3 sites listed.

How can anyone with a normal site compete with this?

[spidermonkey]

CSS - Absolute Positioning - Z index.

Biggest hint I can manage...

Mike

[viarosa]

Perhaps it's the "invisible text" that cost me a 400 point drop in google rankings???
Originally I had the text in color that matched the background, so that the description would included that instead of the menu. But then I read I could be penalized for that, so I made it visible, but tucked it under a graphic.
If was after this "fix" that the 400-pt (part of a new template created by hired SEO expert who later quit) that the drop happened.

Thanks to this forum, I just found how to solve the problem with this article:
How To Optimize HTML Tables for Search Engines and keep your navigation on the left while maintaining SE Optimization efficiency!
So now I've fixed my main page using this technique.

Now just gotta wait and see ... currently, I'm ranking in the 550s for my primary keyword, below pages written in Chinese!

[viarosa]

CSS - Absolute Positioning - Z index.

Biggest hint I can manage...

Is this something To Do, or NOT to do?

[tcady]

Does this mean that DHTML type pop up memnus that use an invisible layer which is made visible with javascript onmouseover will get you banned or diminished rank?????