So it is the oldest trick in the book. Placing keywords in a homepage and then using CSS to make the text dissapear or :hidden. Though can this actually work? Personally I don't think this is a very good idea at all and a good way to get your site booted from the Google index. Though an interesting conversation I had with an offshore SEO firm, suggested that it was possible. Basically you do the above where you place in the text, make the text hidden via your CSS, and then using your robots.txt, disallow spidering of your CSS file. It is so simple that it almost sounds plausible, though surely Google would be onto this like a fatman on a cupcake. Thoughts?
Even if Google doesn't find it, there is the chance that a competitor could find it and report you. It's just not worth the risk. On page text only helps so much these days. Backlinks is much more important.
Damn right they will! Don't under estimate Google, they are 190 Billion Dollar company with a dedicated staff of engineers that do nothing but look for ways that people use to try and game their algorithm.
Google is not a joke, you were able to pull stuff like this back in the day and get first page organic listing easy but now adays there is too much competition and its not even worth doing something like this
I am not suggesting / promoting this chap, this is genuinely a reccomendation put forward to me as part of a SEO strategy by a firm employed to service one of my clients websites. It is not something that I picked-up and ran with, due to the fact that as you say you would have to have to be fairly naiive to think that Google would not pick-up on it. Still interesting though.
any SEO company using old dumb techniques like this doesnt know SEO. it would be better to write a nice article with all the keywords then to have this on your page keyword, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, I'm sure Google's spider bot can redflag something when they see too many commas or different variations of the same word. I also believe that Google's spiderbot knows the color of the background and can compare it to any text color.....RED FLAG!
actually that would be a long term strategy as it may work in the short run but google will catch on...then you will have to unban your site from the index
Google can and will penalize a site for this. Or ban you. The googlebot will flag sites it is suspicious of, and a *human* editor is then sent to the site. If your "strategy" will not pass a human edit, then don't use it.
I am not really sure of google's algorithms. I have seen a few sites rank very well in the search engines but do have hidden text that are not visible to human eye. I happened to select the text on the website, that's when I found out about the hidden text. Who knows!
Go for it. Everyone is looking for a tip, a trick, a cheat and expecting to cash in. While you are doing that real marketers are creating value for their visitors and analyzing the ROI based on the methods they use to bring in real TARGETED traffic.
spoofing google=punishment it might not happen soon or if lucky maybe never if u are lucky its up to the webmaster if the risk is worth taking
Question for all. Don't you really think Google would use their own CSS or none at all when indexing? In "Text Mode", only the text and links show up. Everything else is removed.
Well, indeed this is one of the oldest trick in the book, but it is one of the most ineffective one. I wouldn't use any of these "old tricks" to fool Google: in the end it's basically a suicide. Google will see it right away, and if not one of the competitors in a very short notice, and all you did is boost your site for a short period of time and then took it out from the competition. It is one of the worst thing to do: easy and fast ways are usually filled with disadvantages and risks, while the hard work always pays off. This is my opinion and experience as well.
This may work for a short period of time but I think google will eventually find out about it and the site would be banned.