I don't like to throw other websites under the bus, however I came across a site for a company that I was doing research on and noticed that they have a lot of text in their source code that doesn't show up on the pages at all. It just bothers me because I have used completely whitehat SEO tactics on my site and dropped from being on the first page of Google for many keywords to being almost irrelevant in the rankings and I can't figure out why. And then there is a site like this that has a much stronger PR and SERP and I don't think its legit. I'm curious of a few things: A) Where is this text? Is it hidden under a table or something? B) Is this legal? If not, why has Google not detected it? C) Why is the source code for their site the same on every page of the site? I only briefly scanned the source code of the different pages, but it all looks like it is the exact same source code. How is this possible? Here is the site Here is my site in case anyone can tell me why I might have been penalized in Google's rankings out of nowhere with absolutely no Blackhat Seo tactics.
I am not an expert on google but I have learned about a few black hat seo techniques Basically: They just color the text the same as the color of the webpage a common trick but google will eventually get them and shut them down and No its not legal
They are not using any 'blackhat' methods, unless you count horrible coding as one. Their source code is a mess, probably created with Frontpage or something. All the extra rubbish is mainly for their links on the left side. It's just a ton of inline styles and javascript to create the 'hover' effect of the links. The only real content on the page is the paragraphs at the bottom which begin: We’ve been asked many times why we.... As far as similar code for each page... well, of course they all have the same code. They all have the same layout. They should be taking advantage of CSS and stop using tables for layout. Look at this site: http://mike-gagne.com/ (not mine, just a random one I found) the content (about a paragraph or more) with some links and images is similar to the site you reference. Now, look at the source code of that site. That is the beauty of CSS (divs) which they should be using instead of tables which give the bloated code on their site.
your site seems to be fine. Cant see a penalty on it at all. If you serach for your domain pmi-fl your site comes up which suggests this is not a penalty.
Because blackhack techniques, although constantly being weeded out from results, has a greater short term power in the search engines. Don't worry, build your site strength over time, and you will dominate the serps for your keyword.
thanks for the info/advice. i just fail to see how in the latest PR update, my PR went up on my homepage from a 0 to a 2, and yet my SERPs dropped almost out of sight for keywords i was ranking in the top 5 for before the update. for instance: do a search for "project management international, inc." without the quotations and you will see that a BUNCH of irrelevant results come far before my site. it used to rank #5 for this keyword string and i have no idea what happened. these are the things that had me really confused and thought that perhaps some odd penalty was being given to my homepage for no reason. any thoughts on that?
I would have to agree with accelerated, just build your back links and quality content. Sooner or later they will be found and penalized and you will be right where you need to be.
I've got to admit, I am sure this is soooo frustrating, but it seems like in this case, and in life, nice guys finish last!
Haha now for the sake of clarification was this a digg on SEOs or did you mean SEO tools like "backlink analysis"
Sorry, But i want to say that you should read Google guidelines and help with a good programmer. Hope you will find your answer.