Hidden text.

[Sylvia27]

Hi:

I am doing some SEO work for a company providing medical transcription services.

Now, I have been looking at the most competitive site that has toprankings (after I downloaded the site) and noticed they have a whole page of hidden text on their index page.

This is the URL:
spectramedi.com
I think this is a very competitive market and I need to help my client.
On the other hand, I don't want to spam search engines and take the risk that the site is dropped after the search engines find out.

What are your opinions about this? If this is something I have to do? How would I go about doing this?

Thanks.

[Nick0r]

It's done for one of my keywords too, it's really annoying. Best bet is to explain the problem to google (not that they'll do anything). Don't resort to it yourself, try and work around it. It's most likely done with PHP code that detects googlebot and other crawlers and displays different content. It IS a search engine spam technique, which can lead to a search engine ban.

[Sylvia27]

Hi Nick.

Thanks for your reply.

Alternatively, could I put some text in the alt tags? Or would that be considered Spamming too?

Sylvia

[Nick0r]

Text in alt tags is perfectly acceptable however, I don't advise you putting more than a short description (15 words max) in them as it's only meant to describe a picture.

[starbug]

hehe... I love hidden text!!!

But!!!... It's a dodgy business... I plan to reduce the amount over time. I started with loads of hidden text, but I have been reducing it slowly...

It gets the clicks, certainly - but at the expense of a possible SE Ban..

It's a risk I don't think is worth taking :(

[rwotiz]

Google will ban a site if they catch you using cloaking or hidden text. I would be extremely careful about using any techniques that could get you banned :eek:

[dilligaf]

I think we all see a few sites that utilize such and end up a little higher on the totem pole but I think it's essential to analyze as many factors as possible before making the determination that it is the hidden text that's providing the boost.

Then if so... my opininion is that superior links kicks hidden text's a$$ in round one.

[Razvan Pop]

My site www seoed com has a "Text Only" version. In that version a h1 appears instead of the logo.

In the graphical layout, the h1 is hidden. It contains only the name of the site "SEOed".

If somebody reports me, will Google ban the site?
And if they do, they make a mistake, since i use that hidden text for "Visually Impaired Users".

So it depends what kind of text you hide.

Regards,
Razvan Pop

[Nick0r]

Well hidden text is usually spam text like keyword, keyword hundreds of times over or white text on a white background. They won't mind you changing an image for a bit of text.

[jlknauff]

Hidden text can work, but it can kill you if you get caught. There is a way to use it with a VERY small risk of getting caught, but I won't tell you how because I don't really think it's fair to use. ;)

[Nick0r]

Oh come on clever one, you can't say something like that and keep it a secret, curiosity is essential in a persons attributes.

[jlknauff]

lol :p Maybe if enough people ask I will consider ;)

[jocelyn]

Did you try removing this hidden text to see if your rankings will change.
Since onpage and density is not really the way to go to get top rankings... maybe you are using this for nothing.