Good idea to use hidden text for SEO purposes due to picky clients not allowing additional content?
-
I do SEO for eCommerce websites both in-house and for clients. A few of our clients want increased rankings but are not willing to allow us to make the changes internally to help make that happen. One of which is adding content to the webpages since 90% of them have very little to none.
I have a couple clients that are extremely picky about what can be seen on their eCommerce website. They have the site setup the way they want it but it is not SEO friendly in the slightest. The pages (including homepage) have little to no content, and the only things they want changed are things visitors CANNOT see on the webpages (META, ALT Tags etc).
The tactic i am wanting to use is often used by spammers but i have a legitimate reason to use this and wanted to know if this would be a good idea.
They are wanting to target fairly competitive keywords but are unwilling to allow any on-page changes to add any information and keywords to help with rankings. I was thinking about adding text behind images or hide the text in whatever ways to prevent the end user from viewing it (except for the search engines).
My idea was simply to add a paragraph or two of content for the search engines purely to help in ranking because they have a lot of pages that have zero content except for product image and title listings. Is this tactic recommended or does anyone have any other ideas for these type of situations.
Thanks,
Stephen -
That's been specifically called out by Google and can definitely get you penalized. It's very dangerous. Google will not see hiding text because your client doesn't want to put up text as a legitimate use - for one simple reason. They have no way to know that. All they see is a very abused tactic in play, and they can and will penalize it.
-
I guess it's a matter of intent and use. I personally don't believe that just because people use this as a spam technique it should not be used in a legitimate scenario as the one described above. If each product has an info div describing the product which can be hovered over to show the text than the end result is better UX. In my opinion better UX converts better.I think as long as It is used properly and for the right reasons it's not spam.
As far as being SPAM in Google's algorithm, I don't know!
Google has top-secret algorithms designed to detect when text is hidden/positioned off screen. If this type of hidden text is detected, our important red phone rings, and this becomes one of the signals that may cause us to believe your site is deceptive.
The KEYWORD here is MAY.
May cause us to believe your site is deceptive - leads me to believe it is analyzed on a case to case basis. Which if your not spamming like hiding hidden links or 1000 words of text you'd probably be fine.
However this leads to a greater question. Should spammers hijacking legit design techniques ruin them for everyone and keep legitimate needed sites from using them due to fear of being de-indexed?
-
"Another truth is that using “text-indent: -9999px”, or hiding text (keeping text out of the user’s sight in a browser), is common spammer’s technique to hide off-topic keywords and/or links to manipulate search engine rankings."
She says it's SPAM.
Google has top-secret algorithms designed to detect when text is hidden/positioned off screen. If this type of hidden text is detected, our important red phone rings,
lol.... "RED PHONE"
-
Could you provide some background on the statement about not being spam? I'm more familiar with the statements that urge caution, such as this one from a Google employee (Maile Ohye) at http://maileohye.com/html-text-indent-not-messing-up-your-rankings/.
-
Using css create a div positioned left:-9999;
Create an info button or link that with
a.hover divName { left: 300 - or whatever !
Should work and not be spam just cool css at work !
-
The client is more concerned with image then making money. They've been told that this is not good business practice and you won't make more money because of it. They seem to be fine with that because to them like i said, it's more about how they look to the general public then how well they rank.
(they are in the fashion industry)
-
OMG NO!!!
This entire thread is now feeling like one of those "elephant in the room" situations, so I am just going to come out and say it - that is called C-L-O-A-K-I-N-G!!! Don't do it!
The only result you are likely to see from that is a manual penalty from ALL search engines
As for your clients, the problem you have is that they think they know better than the person they hired to provide professional services. This is a situation that will not end well and the quicker you resolve it, the less damage it will do to your business and your peace of mind.
Whenever our company encounters a client who wants to call the shots like this, the response is to send them a legal disclaimer form that they are required to sign. The document basically says that they acknowledge and accept that due to their having chosen not to accept our professional advice with regard to their website, our company can not be held responsible for any failure to achieve the desired results, including rankings, sales and/or other forms of conversion. The document also includes an indemnity against claims as a result of any perceived failure of the campaign.
When presented with such a document and asked to sign it, the response is generally that the client either wakes up to the fact that they are hurting their own business, OR they demand to know why we would expect them to sign such a thing. The polite, but firm response is "you are making it impossible for us to do our job the way it should be done, so without this agreement in place, we will have to refuse the work". At that point, if they are not prepared to either sign or rethink, it is time to part company.
Don't fall into the trap of trying to keep a client like this unless you are protected. This sort of client will never own their mistakes and the worst thing in the world would be to find yourself being sued for a failure of their making.
Hope that helps,
Sha
Incidentally, we have only one client who has ever chosen to accept that their stipulations are likely to prevent us from achieving good results.
-
Tell your client that they are asking you to fight Mike Tyson with your feet tied together.
Tell them that they should not expect anything better than second rate results and an ass kicking.
Tell them that you think they are wasting 80% of the money that they spend on their site.
Tell them that you don't feel good taking their money when they have no chance of winning.
These will not be happy clients. Who would be happy pumping money into a losing site. It will be your fault, not theirs.
You will not be happy doing this work.
-
Sounds like your clients want results without paying for it. You sound willing to do that, using spammer techniques, but it is not a good idea for a couple of reasons.
1. Hiding a paragraph or two of content can get the site lowered or banned by Google instead of increasing its rank. Your customers won't be happy with the cost of recovering from that. And, you will get all the blame.
2. Hiding the reality of what it takes to be ranked high in Google from your client is a dis-service to your client. They will expect more from you in the future (until they get pushed to the back of the line in search).
3. Not educating your client on the realities of needing good visible content their customers, not just the robots, can see, reflects poorly on you. Anyone in this business encounters difficult clients unwilling to pay for services is a given. It's a good learning curve for you, more than for them.
I have a client who has just come back to me and my recommendations after a year and a half of trying to get results from others promising them more for less, but never able to deliver.
When you have the confidence and experience to know what your knowledge and skills can do for your customers, and know that what you requires monetary value, than you can calmly lay it out for them.
One option is to let your client know what kind of ranking they can get without adding content to their webpages. Then let them know what ranking they can expect by adding content and at the price you require to do the work and stay in business.
Performing black hat/spammer techniques falls on you, not your client. It's too high of a risk and price to pay for a client looking to get ahead by squeezing you dry.
-
Can you afford to choose different clients?
Is there a way you can convince them of the business case of more information? Modify five medium-traffic pages with more information, and see how those products perform? Make it a business case, not just an SEO case. Find out what the most common questions are to the sales or support team, and answer those questions on the product page. Tell the client you will help reduce their costs (of support), reduce their returns, increase customer satisfaction, etc.
If they just want increased rankings, take a ten-word phrase from the page and show them they are already ranking number 1, and that it's time to focus on sales.
-
Hi Stephen,
Definitely, definitely don't do this. It sucks that your clients don't want to operate with you, but doing this might put them at risk of a penalty. You clearly know that the technique is used by spammers, and even though you might justify you reason, Google will not.
Have you showed your clients some articles or blog posts on the importance of content perhaps?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Page content | What to do?
Hello Guys, I have some duplicate pages detected by MOZ. Most of the URL´s are from a registracion process for users, so the URL´s are all like this: www.exemple.com/user/login?destination=node/125%23comment-form What should I do? Add this to robot txt? If so how? Whats the command to add in Google Webmaster? Thanks in advance! Pedro Pereira
On-Page Optimization | | Kalitenko20140 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi there, We keep getting duplicate page content issues. However, its not actually the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland
E.G - There might be 5 pages in say a Media Release section of the website. And each URL says page 1, 2 etc etc. However, its still coming up as duplicate. How can this be fixed so Moz knows its actually different content?0 -
SEO and multilanguage site
Hi all! I have used a wordpress plugin called WPML which translates a webpage into another language so that I have a webpage in two different languages (spanish (main market) and english). I'm just doing the seo for the spanish market and I'm gonna start with the seo for the english one. Should I do it just the same as I had a one-single-language page? just with english keywords, etc. I guessit would only differ in the way I do the linkbuilding strategy as the markets are different Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Duplicate content from category pages?
I have an ecommerce store with different categories for my products. Some products do appear in more than one category, is that an issue even if you end up on the same product page/link? Also, I have a "show all products" category, which I believe creates duplicate content too? What is your take on this? What can I do to solve this? Is it even an issue of duplicate content? All answers are very much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
Content by Country
Currently we have a news website aimed at several countries. We want to filter the content of some url (home, category pages, ...) using the country of origin of the visitor. For example in the home we've heard of global character, and a column with news of the country of origin of the visitor. This may affect the position or cause a Google penalty? thank you very much
On-Page Optimization | | promonet0 -
On-Page SEO Priorities: Title's, Anchor Text or Meta data?
**Any suggestions for prioritized on-page SEO work? Relative weights of importance? ** **What is most important from highest to lowest? ** MetaTag Descriptions? Titles? Anchor Text? Alt Text - for images? Anything else? We might not be able to do everything at once like I desire ......but I do feel we should at least get the ball moving in the right direction. I am looking for ideas or suggestions on what to prioritize for a little bit of on-page SEO work on our website. I personally feel that SEO is pretty important but I am a novice. I have been reading this site the past week and want to convince my webpage guy that on-page SEO is important and that we should at least do a few things and gradually get the work done. Rightfully so our #1 priority is to redesign our landing pages (they are bad) . I also think we should do a little On-Page work concurently. (Lack of on-page SEO is also preventiing me from successfully submitting and being accepted by Dmoz, Yahoo, BOW etc) He is mainly a back engine guy and does a very good job with that. If I were to TELL him to do a few prioritized on-page SEO things what would you suggest? He did do something on the home page at my suggestion but that is all to this point. We have over 400 pages indexed with very little on-page SEO on them. Thank you, UtahTiger
On-Page Optimization | | Boodreaux0 -
Percentage of duplicate content allowable
Can you have ANY duplicate content on a page or will the page get penalized by Google? For example if you used a paragraph of Wikipedia content for a definition/description of a medical term, but wrapped it in unique content is that OK or will that land you in the Google / Panda doghouse? If some level of duplicate content is allowable, is there a general rule of thumb ratio unique-to-duplicate content? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | sportstvjobs0 -
Duplicate Content using templates
Hi, Our web site is designed using a template, which means the header and footer is consistent across all pages. Only the body content is unique on each page. Is the google bot able to see that the header and footer content is defined by the common template? Will this have any impact in terms of duplicate content? For example, we have a two line text in the footer that summarize the services we provide. Because the same text is in the footer of all pages, i am concerned about creating duplicate content. Finally, does it make sense to include keywords in header and footer of the template? Will it have any positive or negative SEO impact?
On-Page Optimization | | petersen0