I am a webmaster/designer for several sites/blogs and recently got penalized by google for hidden text:(

I have been doing a lot of research on it and I am confused.

First of all, I agree, the site absolutely had hidden text.

But the hidden text was not to increase my seo, or trick google into getting a better page rank. It was not a seo tactic but rather a design tactic. I am a huge fan of csszengarden and am fascinated by css. My sites are very eyecatching and I try very hard to follow every web standard and google guideline when making my designs. My hidden text was and still is identical to csszengarden tactics:

–HTML–

Title of Site

–CSS–

#title {
text-indent:-9999em;
background: transparent url(images/path) top left no-repeat;
}

After getting penalized I was stuned because I thought I was following proper standards. I did some more research and also found on another one of my favorite blogs:

http://ma.tt

If you look at his header, he has the same identical hidden text and yet he still remains a high page rank.

I would love any input you had on the issue? As far as my site goes, I have since removed the hidden text and inserted a blank space, removed the text-indent from the stylesheet and resubmitted the site to Google.

Again, any input on the subject would be wonderful.

Thanks so much for all of your advice and everything you do. I know you don’t get paid for any of this;)

Jason

Thanks