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Invisible h1 tags
I have been inviolved in a discusssion regarding a site with <h1> tags which are palced -1000 pixels off the page by the CSS.
The designer claims it is standard accessibility fix and is not to do with SEO I am a little more cynical about it. As it breaches the letter of Googles law on hidden text.
As it is hidden text which the user cannot see.
In the favour of the designer I do not feel the arrangement breeches the spirit of googles guideliens as I do not believe it is designed to fool the search engines, it only duplicates other headers on the page and would be meaningful and appropriate if it was visible on the page.
Howevere im very very careful about googles TOS when following onpage optimsiation, what would other peoples opinion be?
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Quote:
Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors.
To me that say change it so you can see it on your page
Quote:
* Using CSS to hide text
That's one of the list that's not a good idea to hide text on your page. By setting your margin to -1000px you are doing just that. And tell your designer that - on numbers in css is a bad move anyway as it will not work right in some browsers and/or may mess up other parts of the site under that div/section.
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noj you said yourself "I do not believe it is designed to fool the search engines, it only duplicates other headers on the page and would be meaningful and appropriate if it was visible on the page"...but it's not visible on the page! What is the reasoning behind positioning the text 1000px off the page? Accessibility is not a valid argument as there are plenty of ways to incorporate accessibility options without using malicious approaches.
The hiding of content is a potentially harmful approach therefore I would avoid it at all costs. Even if you are replicating existing content this approach could still potentially appear malicious as you are essentially repeating content which could be considered as spammy if too heavily repetitive?
With the greatest of respect, every web designer/developer in the world thinks they know seo, but they don't. So don't take a developers advice, listen to the experts!! AVOID HIDDEN CONTENT!
Chris
Last edited by chrisains : September 3rd, 2010 at 05:10 PM.
Reason: typo
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Don't hide text because we don't know if they have or are intending to create automated systems to discover hidden text. If they do have these, it would raise a red flag, right?
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It's black hat. It's not even gray hat. Granted, this concept can be rationalized easier than most, as there are "legitimate" reasons, but I still don't think it is necessary or appropriate.
Hiding text for whatever reason is shady - at least to me.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by seogoat
Don't hide text because we don't know if they have or are intending to create automated systems to discover hidden text. If they do have these, it would raise a red flag, right?
I don't know exactly what your other 1,638 posts (at time of writing) were about but if you don't already know that search engines (especially Google!!) are dead against hidden content then you don't deserve to comment on an seo forum!!
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