Hidden Text at top of web page

I was not sure if google penalizes this, so I am asking:

I wanted to add some text on the very top of my website, which is outside the frame.
I also wanted to match the text to the background, making it not visible to the public...

would this hurt me?

And if it does, then what about you making the text visible?

As I understand it, Google really really hates hidden text. When you hide text in the way you've described, you're showing your visitors and the search engines two different web pages. I believe this practice is called "cloaking" and is considered to be black hat. I don't do SEO for a living, so I could be wrong.

Don't risk doing it, period! If the user cannot read the text legibly, don't do it. This includes 'hidden' layers as well as using alternative style sheet colors that match a page background color.

Cloaking is when you send search engines a different page than you send visitors.

What this member is describing is called 'hidden text'.

Thanks for the correction! My mistake.

As a general rule... if you have something on your page that the public cannot see but the search engines can... hidden text is considered search engine manipulation and will eventually earn you a penalty and possibly even a ban.

Thanks for the help everyone..

So if I put at the top some words, BUT they are visible to everyone, is that ok?

if you look at my site (in my sig) you can see at the very top, its like a pale white color.

If you put those words and they are visible they should be fine as long as you don't overuse them.

Secondly, make sure that in case you get surfers to your page they won't see those words as something fishy and leave your page before even scrolling down. It would be useless to work that hard to get those visitors to your page but no one would click on your links or see your products.

Dont risk your site to get penalized unless you love your site..

I say do it and let us know how you fair.

JKJ

I say do a search in the forum to yield endless results on the questino you asked.


And NO. Don't do it, you already know it's a dumb idea.

Talking from experience.

Do not use hidden text!

I was using css to hide text in a block and Google found out and banned us.

Luckly enough I was signed up to site maps and they let me know what they did. I removed the hidden text straight away and did some more "legal" seo and a week later we was reinstated back to where we was.

Hidden Text is definitely not the way to go!

lol

Hidden text is not going to make the difference between ranking and the top ten or being number 500....lol

It's a silly thing that will only hurt you. If you're that concerned about enough "Relevant" content, take the time to write additional topical content within your page that your visitors can see (but really won't read); or, hire a independent copy writer to do it for you for like, oh, 25 bucks and save the risk of getting wacked by some search engine.