27 March 2010

SEO To Do or Not To Do – Hidden Text or Links

Google views hidden text and links as untrustworthy SEO practice because it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors to your site in hopes of gaining a higher ranking in the Google search results. If your website is found to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent your website may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. In order to know if your website is in violation of these practices you should identify anything that is not legible to the human eye. Any text or links placed there for the sole purpose of the Google crawl bot rather than for a visitor to your site looking for a product,service or information. Common deceptive practices are, using white text on a white background while the Google Bot or Crawler can read the content for ranking purposes an individual cannot.

Including text behind an image, this is clearly a move to trick the Google Bot as this text cannot be viewed by an individual who visits your website. Also using the CSS language to hide text. Setting the font to size zero, while Google can still read the text a human cannot and so this is also an attempt to fool the Web Crawler. If using text to describe something search engines can’t access for example, Java Script, Images or Flash files keep in mind that many human visitors using screen readers, mobile browsers, browsers with plug-ins and slow connections will not be able to view that content either. Using descriptive text for these items will improve the accessibility of your site. Now here are a few Google approved tips for making your website accessible.

Images, use the ALT attribute to provide descriptive text, in addition Google recommends using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image. Java script, place the same content from the Java script in a no script tag, if you use this method, ensure the contents are exactly the same as what is contained in the Java Script and that this content is shown to visitors who do not have Java Script enabled in their browser. Video, include descriptive text about the video in HTML, you might also consider providing transcripts. If you do find hidden text or links on your website, either remove them or if they are relevant for your site’s visitors make them easily readable. Provide visitors the information they’re looking for, provide high-quality content in your pages, especially your home page, this is the single most important thing to do. Once your pages contain useful information, it will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful information-rich website you should always write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic.

Linking, make sure that other sites link to yours, links help Crawlers locate your website and can give your site greater visibility in Google search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching technique to display pages that are both relevant and important to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important” Also note that Google algorithms can distinguish the difference between Natural links and Unnatural links. Natural links to your website develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would benefit their visitors. Unnatural links to your site are placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links are schemes or doorway pages. And finally always make sure that the SEO consultant that you work with conducts their SEO by Google standards since if they are your host and they practice deceptive SEO practices then even being on one of their servers can lead to your website being penalized.