Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can hidden backlinks ever be ok?
-
Hi all,
I'm very new to SEO and still learning a lot.
Is it considered a black hat tactic to wrap a link in a DIV tag, with display set to none (hidden div), and what can the repercussions be?
From what I've learnt so far, is that this is a very unethical thing to be doing, and that the site hosting these links can end up being removed from Google/Bing/etc indexes completely. Is this true?
The site hosting these links is a group/parent site for a brand, and each hidden link points to one of the child sites (similar sites, but different companies in different areas).
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the quick feedback.
This clears up things for me a bit.Thanks,
Stephen -
The separation between black hat and white hat tactics is generally a clear line. The simple question is, does the code exist for the benefit of your site's visitors or solely to manipulate search engines?
DIV tags are used to apply CSS rules to specific pieces of code. If you have a link contained in a DIV and the display set to none, that link would clearly never be seen by the site's visitors. It is apparent the link exists solely to manipulate search engine results, and therefore is a black hat tactic.
When Google and other search engines discover black hat tactics being used on a site, they will take action. The action can be relatively minor such as ignoring the link. The action could be mid-range such as removing the page containing the link from the index. At the extreme end, they can remove the entire site from the index.
Each search engine has their own internal guidelines on how to handle these issues. Some issues are handled automatically via algorithms, while other issues are handled by manual review. There are no published standards on exactly which punishments will be handed out for a given violation. It is simply best to completely avoid anything black hat.
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
-
Why can't google mobile friendly test access my website?
getting the following error when trying to use google mobile friendly tool: "page cannot be reached. This could be because the page is unavailable or blocked by robots.txt" I don't have anything blocked by robots.txt or robots tag. i also manage to render my pages on google search console's fetch and render....so what can be the reason that the tool can't access my website? Also...the mobile usability report on the search console works but reports very little, and the google speed test also doesnt work... Any ideas to what is the reason and how to fix this? LEARN MOREDetailsUser agentGooglebot smartphone
Technical SEO | | Nadav_W0 -
Can you force Google to use meta description?
Is it possible to force Google to use only the Meta description put in place for a page and not gather additional text from the page?
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
Tools/Software that can crawl all image URLs in a site
Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png
Technical SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Can Google Read schema.org markup within Ajax?
Hi All, as a local business directory, we also display Openinghours on a business listing page. ex. http://www.goudengids.be/napoli-kontich-2550/
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
At the same time I also have schema.org markup for Openinghours implemented.
But, for technical reasons (performance), the openinghours (and the markup alongside) are displayed using AJAX. I'm wondering if google is able to read the markup. The rich snippet tool and markup plugings like Semantic Inspector can't "see" the markup for openinghours. Any advice here?0 -
How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
Hello all, We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site. I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool. Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method? Would appreciate anyone's immediate response. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | artdivision0 -
Can iFrames count as duplicate content on either page?
Hi All Basically what we are wanting to do is insert an iframe with some text on onto a lot of different pages on one website. Does google crawl the content that is in an iFrame? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cttgroup0 -
Can you have a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html on the same site?
Thanks in advance for any responses; we really appreciate the expertise of the SEOmoz community! My question: Since the file extensions are different, can a site have both a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html both siting at the root domain? For example, we've already put the html sitemap in place here: https://www.pioneermilitaryloans.com/sitemap Now, we're considering adding an XML sitemap. I know standard practice is to load it at the root (www.example.com/sitemap.xml), but am wondering if this will cause conflicts. I've been unable to find this topic addressed anywhere, or any real-life examples of sites currently doing this. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | PioneerServices0 -
Thoughts about stub pages - 200 & noindex ok, or 404?
With large database/template driven websites it is often possible to get a lot of pages with no content on them. What are the current thoughts regarding these pages with no content, options; Return a 200 header code with noindex meta tag Return a 404 page & header code Something else? Thanks
Technical SEO | | slingshot0