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Optimize your podcast title to get your podcast listed first. What does google think about hiding text on your website - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 32
Hidden text on a website is a black-hat SEO technique that violates Google's policies and can get a site banned, even when the hidden keywords are relevant to the page content.
Key takeaways
- Hiding white text on a white background or using CSS to push text off-screen violates Google's policies and risks a site ban.
- Google's robots flag hidden text automatically without judging relevance, so even relevant hidden keywords can trigger a penalty.
- Kay Bailey Hutchison's site was banned from Google for using CSS to hide a block of text behind an image.
- A Lynx Browser shows a website as plain text, revealing exactly what Google's crawlers can and cannot see.
- Podcast titles should include high-search-volume terms like 'Internet Marketing' to maximize discoverability on platforms like iTunes.
About this episode
We discuss Internet Marketing and how Internet Marketing is a better term than Search Engine Marketing for getting traffic on a browser and on iTunes. We also discuss hidden text. If you are tempted to hide text with same color background or with CSS listen to this podcast to learn the risks. Lynx is a text browser, what is it and how could it be useful for you?
Questions this episode answers
Does hiding text on a website help with SEO or will it get you penalized?
Hiding text is a black-hat SEO technique that violates Google's policies. Even if the hidden keywords are relevant, Google's automated robots flag the hidden text without judging its relevance, and the site can be banned. A competitor reporting the practice to Google can also trigger a manual penalty.
What happened to Kay Bailey Hutchison's website and why?
Kay Bailey Hutchison's site was banned from Google because it used CSS, also called cascade style sheets, to hide a large block of text behind an image. One of the hidden phrases was 'why do we have knees,' which was irrelevant to her site's content.
What is a Lynx Browser and why should website owners use one?
A Lynx Browser displays a website as plain text with no images, showing exactly what Google's crawlers see. If the text view shows nothing relevant, it explains why a site may not be indexed. The hosts recommend visiting lynx.isc.org or searching for Lynx Browser to find a tool.
In their words
If you had all images and you hadn't been listening to our podcast and you didn't know that you shouldn't have all images because Google can't see it, you could pull up your website in a text browser and you would see nothing.
Chris Burris
Terms defined in this episode
- Hidden text
- Text made invisible to website visitors, such as white text on a white background, used to insert keywords without displaying them to users. Google classifies this as a black-hat technique and can ban sites that use it.
- CSS image replacement
- A technique where CSS is used to indent text thousands of pixels off-screen and an image is placed over it, effectively hiding the text from users while keeping it in the HTML source code.
- Lynx Browser
- A text-only browser that strips all images from a webpage, showing only the text content. It reveals what Google's crawlers see when they index a site.
- Black hat SEO
- SEO techniques that violate search engine guidelines, such as hiding text, which can result in a website being banned from Google's index.
Full transcript is being added.
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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