Using a div to hide keywords.

[GoQuickly]

I have a friend that showed me a technique on how to add keywords to your page if they don't really fit well in the written content you have.

He put them in a Div and then used CSS to place them -XXXX off the page.

This also didn't give a scroll bar horizontally.

Is this good or bad?

Found the code:

Image Replacement
Image replacement is a great way to display your image without sacrificing your keywork opportunity. This is done by adding the image reference in the css and manually hiding the text. See the example below (this is a real example from our own code).

HTML: <h1 id="logo"><a href="/" title="weburge">weburge</a></h1>
CSS:
#logo {
margin-top: 20px;
float: left;
width: 191px;
height: 49px;
background: transparent url(/images/logo.gif) left top no-repeat;
}

#logo a {
display: block;
width: 191px;
height: 49px;
text-indent: -9999px;
}

As you can see, the text is positioned at -9999px way off stage. Browsers do not care where the text is, as long as it is readable.

 

[enlytend]

The image replacement code is somewhat legitimate, but if you use it to stuff keywords or try to spam your way into the rankings you'd better pray you never get hit with a manual review unless you enjoy the challenge of filing reinclusion requests or starting over with a new domain.

If you're successful in a high-competition niche your competitors will file a spam report on you in a heartbeat.

If your keywords don't fit in your content, write more content ... write better content.

 

[karthimx]

The keyword needs to be in the content with hyper link. that will help people to click on that and search engine to crawl them.

 

[Pagelift]

The keyword needs to be in the content with hyper link. that will help people to click on that and search engine to crawl them.

I don't think you read his post all the way

Is this good or bad?

Will it work on a get-rich-quick article site? Yes. Do you want to use it on your important sites? Definitely not. As enlytend said, if you are ever hit with a manual review, Google will not like the fact you are keyword stuffing a page and you are breaking their rules.

Things like this *are* proven to work though. You can offset the keywords off the page with absolute positioning or text indent and even block Google from spidering your CSS file.

 

[topuser]

that is a black hat technique... it is risky.
Maybe you will be banned!

 

[carob]

This makes sense if you want to replace text with an image for graphic effect, such as a logo or a special font. But using it as a way to hide keywords is not the same so as everyone says it is risky.

 

[GoQuickly]

So my number one competitor in Google I found is using this technique and I can't find the text he is hiding off the page. No matter how I firebug it or disable the CSS....

Should I report it?

 

[enlytend]

Tried setting your User Agent string to Googlebot?

Your call as to whether to file a spam report or not...

 

[GoQuickly]

User Agent string? not familiar with it.

Do explain.

 

[carob]

User Agent string? not familiar with it.

Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/

The user agent string is sent in your HTTP requests to say what browser and usually operating system you are using.

 

[parish]

Thanks for ur information...

Web Design and Development

 

[spline]

I do think google will be very quick to find this out and punish sites who do use this trick.

Its very simple for them to see that text is beyond a normal screensize.

 

[enlytend]

The user agent string is sent in your HTTP requests to say what browser and usually operating system you are using.

What carob said.

Search engine bots send unique user agent strings. It's possible to show different content based upon visitor information like the user agent.

FYI, this is also called "cloaking" - if you get caught doing it to spam, it will send your site straight to Google's sh*tlist.

 

[mysteryleo]

I think that'd work, but man you're running a risk. If they keywords don't naturally work in your site, then you really aren't relevant to that topic.

Anyways, you're focusing too much on relevancy, and not enough on rank. You might be relevant, but you won't rank. Work on the rank problem.