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Website tip of the day - Don't Use Hidden Text and...

According to Google there are certain Things to Avoid - especially certain deceptive practices that can hurt your site since now the search engine spiders (or crawlers) know to look for them - for example:

Do not hide text by putting for example, white text on a white background - this will get you banned.Don't fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to "cloak" pages, or put up "crawler only" pages. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don't intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.

Posted by Michael Thomas, Real Estate Website Optimization on 06/09/2007 09:04 AM

Comments (14)

search engine results, seo, sem, organic search results, search engine optimization, google rankings

14 Comments on Website tip of the day - Don't Use Hidden Text and...

JUN

2007

Great advice as usual Michael

Great post! Very true with the deceptive test within your site. I have heard of many issues with people doing that. Good advice.

I know this is something may agents and agencies have done in the past - but if your competitors spot it and report you to Google or the other majors, or the search engines realize it it is very difficulty to get re-included in their directories.

I've heard similar horror stories. I always apprecicate good information on website optimization. Thanks for the info!!!

Michael, I can't believe many honest agents would try these website tricks. For those that do, they deserve to have their sites ignored.

Well, I did not know any of that. Would I have done it if I have found out before? I guess we'll never know =)

Great advice, You can add to that list, stop waisting your time trying to build reciprocal links with other Realtors. They are about worthless in googles eyes now, and there have been hundreds of examples recently of websites being taken out of google and yahoos indexes for doing hundreds of reciprocal links, so not only is it a waste of time to do it a little, it is really bad to do it a lot.

Jim

James - I beg to differ - it is only bad to build with low quality websites - or in the Advanced Access to interlink within website authoring tools (AA to AA sites, or Point2Agent to Point2 Agent sites - etc.) - and many sites are just pure junk - so you have to keep on the lookout for high quality sites that truly try to serve a purpose - a site I recently joined that is a directory but works great it Americas Relocation Home Services - I joined this on Michael's advice, and it truly works as a high quality inbound link(s) and increases my web-presence and exposure - if you're not sure you can go to Google and search the terms Wellesley (or Natick, or Needham) MA relocation (or relocation services) - and see what is coming up - the proof is in the pudding.

I'm glad I read this because someone was just telling me the other day to do just that. Add text in the same color as your background.

What will webmasters and their clients think of next? I think it's great search engines are responding to this practice.

I recommend that you download the "Google Toolbar"

http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index_pack.html?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=toolbar%20google&tbbrand=GZAZ

It has a neat tool on it that shows you "page rank"

it is always a good idea to link to sites with a higher page rank. Google bots and spiders/crawlers see this as ".... if this site is linked back to, from a high rank page, then, this site must be important also."

The algorhythm that search engines use take into account, and issue more points to pages linked back to, from high ranking pages.