My SEO Guy did this... will it get me penalized?

So I of course have seen a lot of keyword mobility in the last couple of weeks (I guess because of the more frequent updates we get now) and I also suddenly hit the SERPS with a force, now this i'm sure has something to do with my site being updated recently and i've been filling in header tags and whatnot.

but, my question is this... I was poking around the code in my shop this morning and found that my SEO guy (I hired two months ago) placed a new style sheet in my template that looks like this :

.seo{
visibility: hidden;
width : 0px;
height : 1px;
overflow : hidden;
}

Then in my files I see:
<base href="<?php echo (($request_type == 'SSL') ? HTTPS_SERVER : HTTP_SERVER) . DIR_WS_CATALOG; ?>">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="seo.css">
<?php

Which is calling the seo.css file, then later on I see:

<div class="seo"><h1>(my keyword #1) <br> (My keyword #2)<br>(My keyword #3)<br> My Keyword #4<br> My Keyword #5</h1></div>

Now I'm no coder but this to me looks like a trick to make the SEs see H1 tags with my keywords on the top of all 3,000 of my pages... this sounds not quite right and I'm concerned as to whether or not this is right... I'm thinking now.

what do you all suggest?

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this for me...

 

Smells like Black Hat for me.
If you have diffrent content for normal user and for SE, as it shows here:

visibility: hidden;
width : 0px;
height : 1px;
overflow : hidden;

Code (markup):

You can get into trouble.
Search engines should see your page like normal users do, without stuff thats invisible for normal users.
I think you will get penalised by Google if you continue to have that.

 

Sacrifice the rankings and remove asap or you will (eventually) get busted.

- or -

If your serps have yielded good money for you. Get another domain on a different server and start from scratch there with only light gray - white hat SEO.

If your SEO guy did not tell you this before and you did just notice it by accident, DUMP HIM QUICKLY AND PICK UP ANOTHER ONE AT DP. Doing this with your permission is one thing, him risking your creditability without you knowing is something totally different.

 

Yes, that will get you banned. And it won't take long. Text hidden with css is an old one and they will catch it quickly.

 

Well that's what I was thinking, I'm going to paste his response to my asking him why he did it here as it might be helpful to someone...

==quote from email==
This is a perfectly normal question – and we actually have a pretty good answer for you. I am personal friends with a gentlemen that works at Google who is in charge of their guidelines – basically if something was going to get you banned he’s the guy that sets those rules. As such, I found a while back a loophole in their “hidden text” clause. They do not ban and won’t ban – and this is out of his own mouth – sites which use the type of hidden DIVs we use. They are essentially done the same way as many sites use them for legit reasons – look at the site mcphersonguitars.com. You’ll see the buttons on the right you can click that open a new box with information. This text in these boxes is hidden until you click the button which is run by javascript to make them not hidden any more. Now – it’s a well known and documented fact that Google can’t automatically tell what a script is programmed to do – as such they have no clue these buttons make these DIVS visible – yet there is a legit reason for having the div hidden to start with.

Same thing with MSNBC – the slide out menu system employs a similar system. They’d have to ban legit sites if they banned this method of “hidden text”. In their algorithm and guidelines this is the only form of “hidden text” they readily acknowledge that they shouldn’t ban as it would interfere with development and design techniques. We simply don’t have a button anywhere to make the DIV visible – however again they wouldn’t know the difference if we did because they can’t read the scripts that make it visible. We literally look no different to their system than MSNBC or even some of Google itself.

We’ve even had our system inspected 3 different times by different Google employees who have all passed our system with flying colors after manually looking at and inspecting it – no penalties at all.

==

 

That smells funny. Especially this "I am personal friends with a gentlemen that works at Google who is in charge of their guidelines – basically if something was going to get you banned he’s the guy that sets those rules. As such, I found a while back a loophole in their “hidden text” clause."

What's the guys name? I know a dozen or so people who work at Google but I would never drop a veiled reference like that.

 

The ole' ... I gotta friend at Google LOL

Whether that's true or not, it does seem fishy, as mentioned above

 

Cheaters make tons of money online, so can you but does that make it right? This might be acceptable for a MFA site but not your company's web site. Tread with caution.

If you design your site to show search engines one thing and people something different, that is cheating. You might not get caught today (which is why I suggested you can leave it up but put your long term efforts into another domain) but algorithms are getting smarter every day and soon they will catch you.

About his reply, There is a BIG difference between hiding something that you intend to show the user and hiding something that will never be shown. He should know that and everyone "claims" to have a friend at G.

 

Thank you Erect and others, that's precisely the thinking that I had when I found these... my heart sunk in my chest a little... then when we wrote back about the 'friend' Geez, I mean I've sent Emails to people at G before but none I would consider a 'friend'...

The whole thing just sounds like a "do no evil" sort of issue. I mean doesn't Google's webmaster guidelines say "Don't design or do things to your pages just for search engines".

I'm going to have to craft a well-written Email to this guy and probably fire him. Because I'm going to presume that this is also affecting my other pages and keeping them from ranking because of those tags he's got overrriding the other content on the page (to an extent).

I want to thank you all again and I'm not very happy about this. I wanted to check here first but it sounded fishy to me too.

Anyone know a good whitehat SEO for hire? I think I might be in the market.

 

LMAO - dont belive this guy

 

They do look different if they don't have the button to make the DIV visible. I wouldn't take any chances with this.

 

So this guy is a friend of Matt Cutts? I doubt it.

citruscommerce dont waste your time with this guy, he is feeding you BS.

 

Thought I'd update you followers with his latest Emails, I sent him a message with a link to the G webmaster guidelines and Matt cutts blog and few other sites I found while doing a search on the the topic and this is what he said:

==email quote==
I do totally understand and I’ve read and been over that document a million times. Please understand that what I am saying is not that Google is encouraging anyone to trick their system in any way – but for that matter they have also released documents blasting any form of SEO whatsoever – which clearly isn’t what they are trying to insinuate. What I am saying is that from a programming perspective – this specific method and this method only of text not being visible on the page is something Google does NOT currently penalize, because again there are too many sites with legit “hidden text” using this exact method, and employing scripts to call the text which they can’t crawl. We have again had 3 human beings at Google inspect sites and I’d be happy to share their contact information of the clients and the employees – and these 3 employees specifically were inspecting this method and manually approved our system. To me – that is a good indicator. I agree it may be a “gray hat” type of thing as it’s not necessarily completely kosher – but in the same sense so is changing ANYTHING on your site to show up better according to several other articles.

Lastly – not to mention I’ve literally employed this method on over 10,000 sites and have never once incurred a penalty – literally 10,000 – not an exaggeration in any way.

==end quote==

 

Get the information of his Google contacts.

 

Yep, exactly what i was gonna say

 

I emailed him back for site references and his contacts, i'll be interested in seeing what he comes up with

(any good SEOs out there looking for a new client?)

 

The best sign that he must be bad at SEO is that he is not member of this forum, he would have seen the thread about him.

 

Would be interesting to see if his contacts have a Google email address or a hotmail address.

Anyway, emailing you someone who performs SEO and isnt full of BS.

 

And what happens if you rank well and one of your competitors reports you to google for something he now says is is "not necessarily completely kosher"?

What type of SEO optimizes and follows 10,000 websites? Sounds like a load of BS.

 

drop google an email and ask them
make sure you email via proxy though so they don't realize who you are and ban your account!