Hidden Keywords

[mbrazil]

Whats the officiall line from search engines on placing keywords on your site the same color as the background? in other words invisable to the site visitor.

I have a new client that has this in his site (from previous company he used). He has been submittign to search engines for over a year and has hardly any positions. Could the hidden words be affecting him?

Thanks

[cbp]

Hidden keywords will get you banned, especially by Google (its very explicit in there guidelines) - but the Google algorithm has not been that efficient at detecting them lately. I would get rid of them ASAP.

CBP

[mbrazil]

I thought that would be the case. How do I find out if he has been banned from certain search engines? Will the search engine comment on it.

[rlrouse]

In general, hidden anything on a website is asking for trouble with the search engines. It's much better for all involved to just use keywords and links where appropriate on the page and let the search engine rankings take care of themselves.

This doesn't mean that a site shouldn't be optimized, just that any optimization should be done with both users and the search engines in mind.

[red]

Hiding keywords and making the text invisible is a old "trick" that most designers stopped using over 2 years ago. Anything used to trick the robots such as invisible text, cloaking etc. that is found out comes with hefty penalties.
Submission efforts into the human powered directories -DMOZ for example will be thwarted with this type of sneakiness.
If your client insists on this, let HIM take the risk, You shouldn't ruin your reputation by being a part of it.
The site must be optimized properly to start rising in the rankings. Have him create some valuable
content which includes his keyword phrases and carries good weight on the page. 250 total words per page (at a minimun, 800 maximum) will start to help to solve his problem and it will be "legal".
It won't work overnight by Google is updating very regularly these days and it can happen quickly.
Red
http://www.lockpickshop.com

[StepForth_Jim]

Don't use hidden text as part of your search engine optimization strategy. Hidden anything might get your client banned from the SERPs at Google, AV, Yahoo, and DMOZ. Getting banned from any of these search engines or databases can have a cascading effect based on which search-database serves which other search tools. For example, being shuffled out of Google's database of spidered sites will hurt rankings at AOL.

The best thing to do is to use the text you would have hidden in full, well written complete sentences. Even if you have to use multiple breaks to move the text further down the page you'll be doing your client a better service then using a technique that is certainly illegal and might get his or her URL placed in SE limbo. If another SEO company used this technique, it was probably several years back, (at least I hope so).

good luck

[anuj_pandit1]

Hello Friend,
this Keywords hiding is known as Black Art of Website Optimization.
Do not use it may be you can banned because some search engines can caought you, some times may be you can save yourself.
Some persons are using this art but they are at High Rank and getting a lot of visitors.

<< But i will suggest you that Use the Best Content at your website according the keywords, so you no need to Keyword Hiding. >>

I hope it will help you....

Regards
Alok Kumart Upadhyay

[jovantil]

As Google and Yahoo don't look at keywords in your HTML-file, but only at text. But what to do with an all-Flash site or a site with a Flash-intro? And what if my text are also JPG's in the movie? What is the best way to let those search-engines find you, when you have only a HTML-file and there in a table stands your SWF-file.

jovantil

[obietemp]

What is cloaking?

[red]

ObieTemp,
Cloaking is the process by which your site can display different pages under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most search engines will penalize a site if they discover that it is using cloaking.
Cloaking is a bait and switch technique that delivers visitors a different page from the one listed within the search engine. This technique delivers specific pages to search engines while visitors are re-directed to your home page. This technique is usually used to trick the search engines; it hides page content from the engines.
Red
http://www.lockpickshop.com/