Slightly Hidden Content – SEO [IM Chat #1]
I know many of you SEO’s feel the same or experience the same thing…
You know more about SEO and computers than everyone around you, so you’re “Mr. SEO know it All” that has to answer every computer related question for friends, family, and co-workers, even if it has nothing to do with SEO. But every once in a while a buddy of mine will ask me a SEO question on IM and I take on the role of Mr. Know It All James-SEO.
[11:15] seobuddy: hey james…do you have a minute to look at a site for me?
[11:16] James-SEO: sure
[11:17] seobuddy: Here’s the site
[11:20] seobuddy: the site has rankings, but do you think it may be considered spam at the bottom of the pages?
[11:20] seobuddy: the keywords almost the same color as the background.
[11:20] seobuddy: what are you thoughts?
[11:21] James-SEO: you know, it’s not too bad, but it’s not good
[11:21] James-SEO: I have 2 things to say about this
[11:22] James-SEO: 1. Google can recognize the color difference and assume that since you don’t really want visitors to see those words that well, they can assign a lesser value to those words. why even index that content?
[11:23] James-SEO: after all, those aren’t the words you want to visitors to read
[11:23] James-SEO: since it’s not invisible, it’s not “illegal”
[11:24] James-SEO: But it’s also not in proper legible grammar, so it’s safe to assume that that part is not meant to be read
[11:24] James-SEO: it must be just a bunch of keywords with commas and a matching color background[11:24] [11:25]seobuddy: do they need to be there…isn’t having them in the meta’s good enough…
[11:25] James-SEO: meta data is different than onpage content
[11:26] James-SEO: if you insist on having those keywords there, make sure those exact keywords are in the metas for relevance between meta data and content
[11:26] James-SEO: if those keywords are in the meta data, each phrase better be found somewhere in the content
[11:26] James-SEO: naturally
[11:26] James-SEO: not slightly hidden
[11:26] seobuddy: i also have the same titles on most of my pages…
[11:27] James-SEO: that’s a big no no as well
[11:27] seobuddy: yea, you told me that before, that’s why I mentioned it
[11:27] James-SEO: Google likes each page to be unique
[11:28] James-SEO: if pages have a lot of similarities, they just index the stronger page
[11:28] James-SEO: but back to the almost hidden keywords,..
[11:28] James-SEO: #2
[11:28] James-SEO: the background is CSS, it has a background image and a background color
[11:29] James-SEO: google can only read (for now) the color of the background, which by default is normally white. so the words look to google light Grey on white
[11:29] James-SEO: If the css background is set to Grey, then it could appear you have completely hidden content
[11:29] James-SEO: light Grey content/keywords written in un readable form (like meta keywords) is of course of a lessor value than words in large bolder black font or bright red keywords mixed in content on white backgrounds
[11:29] seobuddy: yea, but i thought that bolding kw wasn’t nec anymore
[11:30] James-SEO: there’s 100′s of ranking factors, ALL of value
[11:30] James-SEO: bolding just doesn’t mean as much now as it did in 2000
[11:30] James-SEO: but search bots can still recognize a bolded phrase
[11:38] seobuddy: so if you were optimizing this site, what would you do to it? i am running a ranking report now, for a crapload of keywords, so it will take a long while. I do have many 1st page rankings, so what could you change?
[11:39] James-SEO: got to find out if the site is ranking for the most relevant traffic AND conversion generating terms
[11:41] James-SEO: i’d make sure 1st that all meta data is unique from page to page and that they are all targeting the BEST (tons of factors) keywords
[11:42] James-SEO: then make sure the content is naturally relevant to those metas
[11:42] James-SEO: or do it vice versa; content then metas
[11:43] seobuddy: yea, but I don’t have the text on some of the pages to support a lot of keywords, so would I be better off putting them at the bottom of the page, only in bold?
[11:44] James-SEO: nothing compares to naturally written content. Why do you feel you should rank for terms your content isn’t relevant to?
[11:44] James-SEO: that sounds dishonest and misleading
Other SEO Related Blog Posts:
Hi, interest post. I’ll write you later about few questions!
Hi, gr8 post thanks for posting. Information is useful!
How soon will you update your blog? I’m interested in reading some more information on this issue.
I think slightly hidden text is temporarily not read by the users but YES the Google BOTS read it and can mark negative against you. The content should be crystal clear to the visitors.
thanks for sharing such informatic subject to all, i’m new to seo and i got a project for seo and the problem is that , that site is full of images only with few text content , and i’m trying lightbox script for the main page , as all knows lightbox is hidden text and onclick it will apper to viewer. so i’m confused wheather it’s good or bad, i’m not hiding it but yes its initially in hidden div, will it effect on seo ( bad effect )
have a look at site http://www.celerity.org.in
any sugesstion plz
chinu834u@yahoo.co.in
@ A NEW SEO STARTER First of all I appropriate the technique you use for optimization, I am talking about lightbox JS … See this is one on the best alternative you are using for the website with heavy images… I think there will not be bad effect of this technique.
Hi,
The hidden contents can cause blocking of your website on google. Google do not appreciate this technique and considers it as a black head technique.
Again, very useful information you’ve got on here. We need more people like you! Keep up the great work. Thanks again for your tips.
if i make text same color as background image will it consider as black hat ??
http://www.primuschennai.com
Hi,
The hidden contents can cause blocking of your website on google. Google do not appreciate this technique and considers it as a black head technique….
Whilst technically not illegal, this is clearly an attempt to cheat the system. Why else would you stuff a bunch of keyword at the bottom of a page and then make it very hard to read?
An interesting point to note is about Google not being able to read background images but can read background colours. It is possible to create text with the same foreground and background colours but use an image to make the text readable. Unfortunately as Google cannot read the image, it may assume that this is an attempt at hidden text. To avoid this, I would recommend people to validate their CSS via the W3C website as it flags any elements with the same foreground and background colours.
Thx for sharing this post. Great article!
Sincerely speaking, this method seems not "white hat" to me, and i prefer to stay away from hidden contents in my practice.
Yeah, it's definitely dirty. If at all white hat, it has some big black stains.
Yeah, it's definitely dirty. If at all white hat, it has some big black stains.