Within this entry of our Search engine optimisation manual I will be discussing hidden text and what it can do to your website.

Hidden text is displayed so that its undetectable under human review, its used more commonly to keyword stuff, its done by setting the colour the same as the background - so for instance; white text on a white background, this is done so that the website can achieve a higher result within the search engines,
You can also commit this crime by putting text behind an image or setting the font size to 0.
Hidden text can serve several purposes mainly so that the visitor to a site has an enjoyable read and it that it would make sense so it wouldn’t appear to be seen as keyword stuffing.

Hidden text is what’s known as a black hat technique and Google doesn’t like it, Google are taking steps to prevent web owners containing hidden text on there websites by penalising them and not ranking them, they have actually gone to lengths of removing them from the search results as if you do this then search engines such as Google will perceive your website as an untrustworthy website.

If you write good quality content for your website and use your tags well there is no need to hide your text within your web pages, you will get caught and cause problems for your website. Please ensure all your content within your website is viewable under human detection if not remove it - You are not following guidelines set out by the search engines so they will remove your site for not following the regulations. Even if you hide the text to a visitor you are not hiding it from the search engines as the text is still in the body of the website therefore it is still seen by the search engines and will be indexed. The search engines eventually pick up on it and then your website will have to undergo scrutiny to try and get there website back on with the search engines to obviously receive revenue.

Many people have abused hiding text to try and attempt to get there website ranked highly within the search engines, however its frowned upon now and you will get penalised so my advice today is don’t do it. At Position Gold were here to offer you the best Internet Marketing Options available to your website, please contact us today for a free no obligation quote.

In this part of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Manual, Position Gold Ltd will be looking at the disadvantages of having hidden text on a website. This is seen as being very bad on the websites part as the search engines deem the website to be practicing black hat and unethical techniques. Below are some examples of some types of hidden text, that is commonly practicsed by unethical Search Engine Optimisation agencies and unethical websites.

Text the same colour as the background

By having background text the same colour as the background or a very similar colour as the background, many people will not see it, however the search engines will see it and will read the text and will add all of the keywords to the search engine index.

Hiding text beneath images and background layers

By having text, such as this spammy example below, on your website, you are allowing the search engine spiders to crawl your site and index your site according to your websites’ content. However, this is a black hat method of SEO and should be avoided at all costs. Those who do this to a website would not just have this on full show, they place an image over the text so that the user cannot see it, but the search engines can.

Here we see the image (below) that has been placed over the text in order to hide the spammy content.

The Z index allows you to add layers to a website and webpage, this lets you have a layer of content and then a layer or image on top of it, making the content invisible to the user, but visible to the search engines.

Hidden divisions

By having a division of content on the website, that is fixed of screen and cannot be seen is a very crafty way of hiding content from users but is also a good way of getting unethical content crawled and indexed by the search engines. The image below, shows an example of hidden divisions. The grey area shows the viewable area of a webpage (E.g. 600 pixels), however, the hidden division contains spammy content and although it cannot be seen on the webpage, it can be seen by the spiders.

Hidden Text is a bad thing for any website to have and should be avoided as much as possible, the risks are just too big, as the search engines do not take kindly to websites who are practicing unethical and black hat techniques.