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SEO Article : Ways to diminish your SEO success »

Certain Search Engine Optimisation techniques that are 'available' to you as a home grown Search Engine Optimiser can actually damange your site's performance in the search engines. So I thought it might be good for me to give you a quick heads up about the top X things which will limit your site's search engine rankings.

In no particular order

1. Hidden text.

Hiding text on your page for the suppossed benefit of the Search Engine Spider is an SEO no-no. Hiding text, also known as SEO cloaking, is practically guaranteed to negate your hard work in other areas of the optimisation campaign and bring about a (harsh) penalty to your site.

Why is hiding text so harmfull?

Displaying content only o the Search Spider is harfull because the Search Engines want to present the best, most relevant content to a user. If the Search Spiders are 'tricked' into beleiving that a page is more relevant/superior then it's competition but the user can find nothing of interest from it then the Search Engine has failed to do its job, and so Search Engines don't want to be tricked because their reputations hang on being able to present the best information to the Search Egnine user.

How can I hide content

It is possible to hide information from a user but have it display to a Search Engine Spider in a number of ways. By far the most useless way to do it is within Comment tags. Comment tags are used by web developers to comment their code. This breadcrumb trails can then be used by their colleagues or even themselves at some later point so they can remember why they placed that page header there, where the bottom of that table division ends and numerous other technical notes that are interesting only to the most anal. Some Search Engine Optimisers will attempt to abuse these tags by filling them with page related keywords, like so <-- search engine optimisation liverppol, search engine optimisation merseyside, seo wirral, seo birkenhead, web design northwest, wed bevelopmnet new brighton --> Search Engines and their Spiders, caught onto this 'technique' years ago and now either ignore the content of these tags completely or read them but attribute no weigh, importance to them. If you see this type of code on your optimised site, call up your SEO team and give 'em an ear full. This practice is outdated and a waste of time.

Another way to hide text is to use the <noscript/> tag. This tag is generally used in conjunction with the <script/> tag which can bring JavaScript related joy to your site - mostly in the form of countdown clocks, mouse cursor followers or random quote generators. Search Spiders cannot read JavaScript and so they look for it's accessible equivalent i.e. they actively search for the <noscript/> tag and read the contents within it. By placing content in this tag your are implying that this replaces the JavaScript content on your page so that in the event that the JavaScript cannot be shown you're offering content which is the same, or as good, as the content presented via JavaScript. You can, once again, abuse this tag so that it can be filled with any content you like because the Spider, not being able to read JavaScript has not choice but to accept what you tell it. So for example, I might say:

<script> ?ecaf gonl eht yhW </script> Which, for those of you who can't read backwards, says: <noscript> I offer a great web design service in merseyside. It's the best, it's reasonably priced and my email communication is just superb. </noscript>

If caught, the trust placed that the Spider has placed in the site will be damaged and it will take a lot of time and effort to regain this trust.

So I can never hide text again?!

Well, I didn't say that now did I? The truth is, and a lot of Search Engine Optimisers will shriek and roll their eyes when I sy this, it is acceptable to hide text in certain situations. You, or your web desgin company, will know when this is because you'll be able to answer the following question with the following answer

Why have we hidden that section of content? Because, in this situation, it will benefit the user

Seems simple doesn't it? The secret is that it is a simple decision as to if you should hide (textual) content on the page, is it a design decision? does it benefit the user. If you can answer honestly to both of those questions then hiding text/conten is fair game and you should not worry about doing it. Some good examples of when hiding content is perfectly legitimate are:

• Giving the user a trimmed down version of the page for printing perposes
• Giving the user a text only version of the apge for accessibility reasons
• Cutting out contetn that the user may find offensive (foul language) or anoying (banner adverts)
• ...

In an ideal world the hiding of textual content will all be done server side so that the user and Search Spider see practically the same thing, however at times it's just easier to do it via Cascading Style Sheets E.g.

<div style="display: none;"> Navigation: Web Design | Web Accessibility | Search Engine Optimisation </div> <div style="display: inline;"> Search Engine Optimisation is our bag. Thanks for printing out this documet, call anytime. </div>

in the above example the navigation bar would be hidden whereas the 'Search Engine Optimisation is our bag...' content would be shown. Perfectly reasonable to do and perfectly executed using CSS.

In summation

If you're hiding text/content from your user so as to display it only to the Search Spider then you are abusing the trust of the Search Spider and can expect to be punished. if, however, you are hiding text/content for the benefit of your user then Search Spiders, and the human moderators who police them, will have no need to impose any sort of ranking penalty on your excellently optimsed site.

SEO Article : How to read the Mona Lisa »