Comments on: SEO Mistakes: Unwise comments

By: Biker Man

Biker Man — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:05:09 +0000

How does this reflect at the moment? I have a site where there is a lot of original text on the page however the page would not be so pleasant for the reader if it was all visible when they may not want to read the full page. We therefore show the first paragraph and hide the rest unless the user clicks to see the rest and then javascript displays teh rest. At the time the page load it uses overflow:hidden to hide the content and then script changes it. The content is in the html and so will it be indexed or will we get punished for using that paticular style OR should we instead use a different way of doing it and if so then what?
Thanks Matt and cudoes for taking the time to help normal punters

By: Sachin Gupta

Sachin Gupta — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:31:24 +0000

according to me using display none to your anchor text is against Google’s policy. It’s called keyword stuffing and will get you delisted from Google, which means your site wont even show up on Google anymore.
Please let me know your suggestions on it.

By: David Thomas Marquardt

David Thomas Marquardt — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:04:18 +0000

I have always wondered how many sites use these tactics and have hidden text. I dont see the benefit.

By: Emma

Emma — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:31:57 +0000

I find it odd that until this day there is not much evidence about the consequences of hidding text deliberately or not. But if search engines’ algorithms cater for hidden text, the question would be how reliable those algorithms are.

By: umesh yadav

umesh yadav — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:44:24 +0000

hi,
I have one client, he has 8 portals. In portals Content, design, and url are same. Client is not ready to change anything. One portal page has indexed. Now can i work start on another portal?. Google will remove my index in future or not ?? Please suggest me what should do i ?

___Umesh Yadav SEO

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:03:51 +0000

Well – a few months later, and i may dare to say that i have an opinion on this. If you now go to http://www.ridom.ltd.uk/web-design-prices/ – RiDom’s Web Design Prices Page – it is now ranked! Conclusion therefore is – display:none css is not at all great when trying to avoid unranking – and the jquery accordian worked for me in this instance! I have another incline at the moment why a certain other page has lost rank – and i think that this could be to do with the shifting of content from one page to another and Google just taking its time to work its way through the conclusion that there is duplicate content on the site. Any thoughts???

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:31:34 +0000

Following on from my previous comment yesterday, i think i have found a solution. The fundamental problem is; display:none and visibility:hidden are to be avoided in coding (if you are seeking optimal pagerank) – so therefore the fundamental solution is to find an alternative without the usage of this code, and i think i have done this. If you view our http://www.ridom.ltd.uk/web-design-prices/ – RiDom Web Design Prices Page – you will see the adaptation of the jquery Accordian. This does not use display:none or visibility:hidden. So fingers crossed this resolves that penalisation in ranking, will publish the result when Google next crawls the page.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:52:43 +0000

I just did a test on http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/ and found that using the css property display:none has meant that this page would be classed as spam. This isnt really great, as my only intentions were to improve the accessability of the page, i.e. display the main chunk of the info on first view, and having a link to drop down the rest of the additional info if someone wanted to view this extra info. Otherwise, if it was all on view at first glance, the page would appear too overwhelming and could lead to potential customers leaving.

Bit of a problem really – when it is tried to be used honestly…

By: Ashley Sheridan

Ashley Sheridan — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:51:50 +0000

There’s no reason to have content hidden by default with CSS. You can use alt text of images that are used as headers, which is what I see a lot of people on here mentioning as a major use for hidden elements.

Use of Javascript to hide elements is a preferred method, as you are relying on the script to make them visible again. This has the benefit that users with no Javascript are still able to access your content. However, the way you do this is key. Don’t fill the page and use script to hide the entire content and replace it with something else. It’s only a matter of time (if they don’t already) that search engines will be able to effectively determine this.

There are also much better ways to lay out your pages than using negative margins. Auto margins are great for centering, and are actually easier to maintain. Heading replacement systems like sIfr and cufon are around to aid with visual headings that can degrade nicely and still remain accessible and SEO-friendly.

By: SEO Web Design Company

SEO Web Design Company — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:56:24 +0000

I thought hidden text was not allowed by Google. There is really no need to hide anything on the page, what is the point? So another SEO won’t see your linking? Sounds like way too much risk for very little reward.