Two things I seem to read over and over in these forums don't seem to marry for me: 1. The SE's can (on the whole) spot hidden text. 2. The SE's do not parse CSS information. Not that I'm particularly interested in actually doing it, but surely then any hidden text would merely be a matter of a display: none; on your selected divs in a page. About 98% of your audience would see what you wanted, the SE's would see everything... - Jamie
Having anything hidden from users (for search engines) is unrespectful and degradinig. I don't want to find a site listed higher in the serps because of keyword spamming, I want to find a site relevant to what I'm searching for. Regardless of the intent, even having a discussion about it is demeaning. Spreading ideas and speculation about how to get away with hidden text will only encourage more people to do so, and make it harder for deserving pages to rank like they should.
Now what you've got to ask yourself is... if I'd floated the idea during a group conversation would you have reacted so strongly? Seriously, sometimes being able to hide behind a forum gets people so full of themselves. I'm only mentioning it out of interest. If you'd read a few of my posts you'd see that i've spoken out against black hat SEO more than once. I have no intention of using any kind of black hat SEO. Take a look at the sites in my signature. They are of considerably better code quality than a lot of websites on the internet. I suppose at least if we were discussing it in person you wouldn't have misspelt "degrading". And seriously, who exactly am I demeaning by having a discussion about it? Myself? If so, I really can live with that, i've done much more demeaning things in the past . Anyway, thanks for your rational and completely non-hysterical input...
People get pretty a lil huffy when they see people talkin bout dishonest SEO techniques. I wouldnt get too upset about it. I think it is still worthy of discussion but i havent personally had much experience with that. I am curious about your sites though. It appears that your sites are mostly "content" with adsense strategiacally placed. Are you able to generate much money from these sites? I've been thinkin of tryin this out myself just to see if it could make much money. I would appreciate to hear more about your sites.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hide items using CSS, like what about drop down menus that just hide the div containing the links off the screen and when you mouse over them they appear? Two of my sites use these and they have no problem getting indexed...maybe SE's can somehow recognize their legitamacy.
So I see! The sites were created primarily as a test vehicle for me to learn SEO from scratch. Although i'm quite experienced with web development and the internet, before recently SEO wasn't an area I had any knowledge of. As a pleasant by-product, they also make a bit of money, although obviously with static (and lets face it, unamazing) content, they're not funding any Gulfstream purchases... The advertising is Overture, which is much more flexible than adsense (and much easier to make money with)...
Yes I agree, I also use this in my menus. It's also used in various image replacement techniques. That's why it interests me, given that people seem to think that SE's detect hidden text easily. (Again, I must reiterate I don't have any intention of using this method....
If I were in a face-to-face group discussion I would have said the same thing because frankly the statement IMO is correct and felt like the right thing to say. :shrugs: As for hiding...??? I, like you, use my real name here. I doubt it would take more than 5 minutes to figure out my full name and most here know it already. I don't as a general rule research the post history of everyone I reply to here. I reply to what I see in the thread as that is usually the base of discussion. Thing is all that wasn't blatantly obvious considering your initial post in this thread which I replied to. See where I'm coming from here?
My comments were actually aimed at mdvaldosta, sorry if that wasn't clear . Anyway, I don't 'do' black hat SEO, I was just floating what I thought was an interesting point. People seem to have got a little excited though... gotta love the internet!