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Are hidden layers a bad search engine optimization (SEO) technique?

Dave, I just read an article of yours where you say not to hide keyword-content with matching font and background color. I'm curious to know if the same is true for a hidden layer containing keyword-content? There is so much to learn about SEO and what are the best techniques to use!

Dave's Answer:

My temptation is to ask what do you think? but I won't. Instead, let's spend a little bit of time talking about the ostensible purpose of search engine optimization...

With the rise and dominance of Google, there's now a clear advantage to creating Web pages and Web sites that appear earlier in the search results. If someone's searching for your product or service, being match #34,403 is clearly considerably less valuable than being match #4 on the results page.

Position on the search results page is based on what I call your Relevance Score, a formula that's calculated by Google's search engine to figure out in quantified terms how relevant your Web page is to the given search term and how authoritative your site is overall (to break ties). Note that this is different, and pretty much unrelated to your PageRank, though most SEO people are pretty obsessed with their PR scores, unnecessarily so in my opinion.

Given the existence of Relevance Scoring, it's clear that if you knew exactly what formula Google used, you could create Web pages that were perfect matches, with the right words in the right places, the right ratio of key words to non-keywords, the right HTML tags, etc. Then, though you couldn't guarantee the #1 spot, you could certainly move to the front of the pack, far ahead of sites that aren't paying attention to what Google's looking for.

The sad news is that no-one outside of Google knows how they calculate Relevance Scores (even if they say otherwise) so we're left guessing and experimenting. And that's where things get a bit dicey...

Some people are so obsessed with getting optimal search rank that they'll try things that they know are cheating, are sneaky tricks, because the value of higher ranking is worth the risk of being busted. (and believe me, if Google busts you for using sneaky SEO tricks, they can kick you out of the database entirely, which will make that 34,303 ranking sound pretty good).

And so they try things like a dozen title tags stuffed with keywords, doorway or portal pages that are designed to be optimal for one specific keyword but exist only for the search engine crawler, and even entirely different pages for search engines through some sneaky low-level coding. Another, simpler trick? Having text the same color as the background, where they can jam a dozen occurrences of their favorite keyword without having the page look too daffy to the human visitor.

All of these are prohibited by Google (and other search engines, lest we forget that Google doesn't have 100% of the market) and if their system catches you doing this, they'll penalize you or even kick you out of the system.

Given all of that, do you think that having a hidden layer through CSS to keyword load your page is fair, legit and valid? Do you think that the hundreds of bright engineers at Google can't figure out a way to scrape your CSS and identify a "visibility:hidden" attribute, then flag your page as playing tricks? If so, try it and see how it goes. But my recommendation is always to make the best possible pages through legitimate HTML and CSS techniques, then focus on writing the best content pages you can write because at the end of the day, it's all about what you're saying, not how you're formatting it.

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Comments

OK, so if you have legitimate intentions of trying to improve a site's Relevance Score, and-or PageRank, but have say a graphics-rich home page with image alt tags as the only "unhidden" means of trying to achieve proper keyword density, etc... is a hidden layer with legitimate content written in plain english (or whatever lang.) like you might find on another page of the site still a bad idea. Google shouldn't penalize ANY hidden layer found, should they?

Posted by: John at January 13, 2005 7:36 PM

I don't think that google penalizes you for hiding content with a CSS. Our stats show that the google bot does not even load the CSS file. Thats not saying that they will not in the future. The fact is that it is currently common place to replace s with imagesthat say/do the same thing. This is grewat for us front end programmers because we can get a good google ranking while apeasing our designers :) But as with anything.... don't abuse it or you may face consiquences as Dave Taylor said.

Posted by: Dave Wolowicz at January 13, 2005 10:55 PM

I think that you can rationalize just about any technique, and there are some in the gray area, but my point here is that if you're using legitimate CSS and HTML methods to create an attractive and information-rich site, Google will like you. If you're trying to monkey with the system or outsmart GoogleBot, you're running risks and you are also not playing fair. If you have great content and people like what you have to say, you'll get inbound links, good relevance score, and you'll bubble up in the search engine results. And, most importantly, stay there over the long term.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 14, 2005 4:56 AM

But my question would be: does Google ding you for hidden divs? I'm not trying to artificially improve my rankings, but I do have quite a bit of text content in hidden divs on a site I'm currently creating. When the user clicks "read more" it becomes visible. If Google's not going to bother with the hidden divs, then I'm shooting myself in the foot by using them.

Posted by: Shawn Wilson at August 30, 2005 2:54 PM

I think it's like anything else, Shawn: If you're using it for legitimate means, like the ability for the viewer to expand specific areas of content, then you're good and Google will probably pay attention to it. It's to circumvent people adding irrelevant keyword content that's never visible that Google's trying to avoid. Make sense?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at August 30, 2005 3:16 PM

As a search engine optimizer, i believe that having a keyword rich content is not enough. There are 2 other factors to rank high in search engines which are:

1)Quality Content: Make sure that your content is UNIQUE and more at least 500 words.
2)Inbound Links: The more Inbound Links (links from other websites) pointing to your website, the better your website ranking will get.

Posted by: John - SEO at November 5, 2005 6:53 AM

Just an update to my Aug 30 post (someone just emailed me, referencing this page). You're right, Dave. Google does index the hidden divs.

Posted by: Shawn Wilson at April 7, 2006 12:33 PM

The guys programing indexers are smarter than us...it is there job.

You can not fool them.

If your wondering if a hidd layer is indexed by Google the answer is.....most likely, but only if that layer has a behaveour like opening onClick or onMouseover or somethin.

To think that guys gettin paid to program indexers wouldn't know the dif between a ligit hidden layer and a SE scaming hiddin layer is pretty nieve.

Posted by: chillbilly at November 9, 2006 4:59 PM

If Google's not going to bother with the hidden divs, then I'm shooting myself in the foot by using them.

Posted by: maroc at May 25, 2007 4:43 AM

I guess it depends on their use. If you have a site that uses a lot of hidden content for the screen readers blind people use then you're not cheating, but helping.

Posted by: graham cartoon at June 13, 2007 12:39 PM

I have a website and the Russian part of it uses old Russian language but the problem is that it is not searchable by Google and the chances of being searched for and found are very small. It occured to me why not make a hidden layer and put a modern Russian version of my message and make the old Russian version visible. These two versions are almost identical but for a few symbols.
Thank you in advance.

Posted by: Vit at May 23, 2008 11:58 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!