Search Engine Optimization No-No:  Hidden Keyword Text
Using “Invisible” Keywords Invites Rankings Disaster

If you want potential customers to find your internet marketing website, then ethical SEO techniques must be utilized, right?  Of course!  Unethical practices normally end up with one end result, and that is … getting banned by the search engines.  Once you’re banned, your website is off the radar, it is nowhere to be found and it is an long, slow struggle to try and undo the damage that was done.

In this article I’ll show you what you should NOT do in an attempt to try and boost your search engine rankings.  The unethical tactic I’m getting ready to share with you is really nothing new.

Chances are, since you are reading this article, is that you’re new to search engine optimization and because of this, you just might be at a point that many website owners get to.  That point is this: you know the importance of writing keyword rich content to help rank well in the search engines and all of a sudden a light goes on and you think, “Well shoot!  What if I add some hidden keywords?  Then maybe I’ll … rank higher, get ranked faster, sooner …”

Hiding Keywords in “Invisible Text”

By what do I mean “invisible text”?  It means that you have HTML coded your targeted keywords in text that is the same color as the background of your website.  So, if I wanted to stuff this blog post with invisible keyword phrases, I’d code the offending text to be white.   

Why not, you may ask?  What harm could there be in adding a few (or a lot) more keywords on your web page to appease the search engine spiders and hopefully boost your rankings?

True story:  I had a client who called me all excited one day “informing” me that she had learned a great method of increasing the number of times she could work her targeted keyword phrases into her content.  When I asked “how?”, I was enthusiastically told that her graphic artist friend told her to just make some of them the color of her background and then she’d not have to worry about trying to write so much content!

Let’s just say I told her that her suggestion was receiving an emphatic NO from me and that I wouldn’t continue SEO-ing her website if she didn’t believe me that it was a huge unethical mistake.  The next day she called to apologize and said she’d done a little internet research and gee … “you are right, Claudia, employing hidden keywords is bad.”

Keyword stuffing via “invisible” means can cause a LOT of harm.  It’s considered spamming and it’s still one of the most common instances of spam on websites today.  Don’t do this!  While almost all forms of hidden text will produce good ranking results in the SHORT term, all major search engines have filters which are capable of detecting hidden text.  Don’t think you or your SEO consultant will out-fool them!

Let me explain exactly what I’m describing to you so that you’ll never allow this mistake to be made on your internet marketing website.  On a side note, I must mention that there are many unethical SEO consultants and search engine optimization services that practice this spamming technique.  Run (don’t walk) away from anyone suggesting you implement this tactic on your website!

Hidden Text Cannot Be Seen By Regular Human Visitors, But Can Be Seen By The Spiders

The theory behind hidden text is that search engines will index the text, even though the text is invisible to human readers, thus making the page more keyword dense.  There are two forms of hidden text — through the use of regular HTML, and through CSS.

As I briefly mentioned above, keywords can be hidden by using HTML coding.  The font color for the keywords and/or keyword stuffed text is coded to be the same as the background color.  Voila!  The coded text now becomes invisible … it seemingly disappears into the background.  However, this form of invisible text is quite easily detected by the search engine spiders.

Hidden text through CSS is more complicated.  The color of the text is defined in an external file, which is not crawlable by search engines.  Without getting into a technical explanation of how this is achieved, let me assure you this attempt at hiding keywords is also going on.

Though the CSS programmers and website owners may have a smug look on their faces right now, guess what?  Good ‘ol Googlebot is, as always, a pretty shrewd little ‘bot and already there is much buzz in the SEO industry that CSS files are not able to hide stuffed keyword content any longer.

The Bottom Line To Achieving Higher Rankings … Slow, Sure, Steady AND Ethical

While almost all forms of hidden text will produce good results in the SHORT term, all major engines have implemented filters which are capable of detecting invisible text.  Websites found to be using hidden text and keywords will almost certainly be permanently removed from the index of all search engines.  For this reason I strongly encourage you to refrain from resorting to this risky SEO tactic.

Hidden text is one of the oldest and dumbest search engine optimization tricks in the book.  If you can’t figure out how to write compelling, interesting marketing copy that also smoothly and naturally incorporates your targeted keywords into it, then you need to stop, sit down, and reassess your (or your hired copywriter’s) writing skills.  Period.

Short-Tail and Long-Tail Search String Queries

This question always arises when new internet marketing website owners are learning to implement keyword strategy, “how many keywords are best (or allowed, or OK to use, etc.) for my keyword phrases?”  Two, three … five, six?  Well, the fact of the matter is, nothing about keyword phrase length is set in cement!

Two and Three Word Queries Are Used Most Often By Searchers

What is “set in cement” is the need to know what keywords and keyword phrases your customer base would most likely be typing into (or querying) the search engines.  That’s what matters!  So, first you’ve got to compile a keyword list, or have one researched for you by a knowledgeable SEO consultant, such as the thorough one I offer: Keyword Research Report

Keyword phrases that your customers are using to find you can be rather eye-opening when you start looking at the statistical information offered by your web host’s web tracker or hit-counter service.  If you don’t have a means to see exactly what keyword phrases your website’s visitors are using to arrive at your website, then I highly suggest you go to StatCounter.com and take advantage of their free service.

I recommend StatCounter to many of my small business clients.  They find this important aspect of SEO optimization know-how to be invaluable in not only targeting the right keywords to use in their content, but in learning where their visitors are originating from.

An Interesting Break-Down Of Short And Long-Tail Keyword Use

January 2007:  According to data collected from users of European Web analytics provider OneStat, most people use 2- or 3-word queries in search engines.  The RankStat research was based on a sample of 2 million visitors, made up of 20,000 visitors in 100 countries each day.  Here’s what they discovered:

1. Two-word phrases — 28.38 percent
2. Three-word phrases — 27.15 percent
3. Four-word phrases — 16.42 percent
4. One-word phrase — 13.48 percent
5. Five-word phrases — 8.03 percent
6. Six-word phrases — 3.67 percent
7. Seven-word phrases — 1.63 percent
8. Eight-word phrases — 0.73 percent
9. Nine-word phrases — 0.34 percent
10. Ten-word phrases — 0.16 percent

I find these statistics on keyword phrase length interesting.   What these stats tell us is that searchers are learning to use multi-word combinations to help zero in on what they are searching for.   They’re learning that the more precise they are in providing search terms, the greater the chance they’ll get to the information they are searching for faster.  This also means the information will more than likely be exactly what they want.

Long-tail keyword phrases are normally quite easily incorporated into our Title tag, Description Meta tag and web page content.  The better we are at narrowing our keyword terms for each page of content, the greater chance we have to not only rank higher in the search engines, but to also attract targeted traffic to our website.    

Targeted Keyword Phrases = A Greater Chance For Targeted Website Traffic

Just in case you are not sure what all this means, I’ll use this example.  Based on the above statistics, we’d see keywords being used such as:

1. Two-word phrase – cake recipes
2. Three-word phrase — chocolate cake recipe
3. Four-word phrase – chocolate bundt cake recipe
4. One-word phrase — recipes
5. Five-word phrase – easy chocolate bundt cake recipe

I am sure this example shows how much sense the 2 or more word phrases make to your search engine optimization efforts.  The more specific you are in each page of information you create, the better off you will be in all marketing and SEO respects.

For more information on researching and utilizing keywords, refer to this very informative FREE 75-page case study:  Keyword Research Guide from WordTracker

What Are Keywords and Keyword Phrases?
How Are They Utilized Effectively For High Search Engine Rankings?

For many professionals who are embarking upon the experience of building their internet marketing website, understanding keyword usage can be puzzling.  There are also many of you who already have your websites up and running, however never understood the need for applying SEO techniques.  This search engine optimization article will attempt to enlighten you on keywords and what they’re all about.

Let’s discuss the basics — the concept of how keywords come into play when writing your website’s content pages and how to utilize keywords effectively for both SEO purposes and for your all important website visitors.

What’s A Keyword?  That’s Is A Great Question!

Because search engine optimization terminology throws many people new to
e-commerce for a loop, let’s clear up the confusion.  There are two ways of looking at keywords and both of them are correct.  The first is from the Internet marketer’s (i.e., your) point of view.  For example:

What is your site about? “eBooks”
What’s that web page about? “Writing eBooks”
And what’s that other web page about? “Free online eBooks”

“eBooks” is a called a keyword and “Writing eBooks” and “Free online eBooks” are considered keyword phrases. The content you create about each page should focus on a keyword or keyword phrase.  In simple terms, a keyword or keyword phrase is merely the topic for the content of a particular web page.

Keyword And Keyword Phrase Explained

The term keyword normally is used to refer to a one-word term.  A keyword phrase refers to the use of two, or three or more word-combinations.  However, one-word keyword terms are extremely hard to obtain high rankings for, and unless that one-word term is very obscure with little search engine competition, I would not encourage you to use them.

As a matter of fact, very RARELY would I suggest you to write content around a one-word keyword.  Reason?  Think about it … a one-word keyword, such as “eBooks”, is much too general.  Most searchers nowadays have learned to enter two or more words in their searches to get better (more precise) results.  Yes, interent searchers have gotten much more savvy over the years.  Here is where the term “keyword phrase” comes into play.

All the words on each web page are “content”.  The content provides supporting information about the keyword phrase you’ve targeted for that web page.  And on it goes, with each page you write focusing on a specific keyword phrase.

What’s The Second Point Of View?

The second viewpoint is that of the surfer’s … in our case, a potential client or customer … a person who is typing keyword phrases into the search engine trying to find a specific product or service that YOU wish to provide.

When a surfer searches for certain keywords, the search engine delivers a number of SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).  The pages are a list of all the pages that contain the keywords the surfer was searching for.  Each of the listings offers a title, short description and a link.

That Link Is What It’s All About

Ideally, (please note I said “ideally”) one of your pages is among the Top 10 (no worse than the Top 20) listings on that SERP.  When a surfer enters their keywords into Google, for instance, they will see your relevant keyword-focused content page among the top listings.  And then …

They read the keyword focused title and informative description that you have provided.   Learn more about why the Title tag and Description Meta tag are so important to your rankings: Meta Tags: Worth Their Weight in Gold

These two pieces of information grab the surfer’s attention over all the other competing entries on the SERP and they decide “this information sounds like what I’m looking for” and CLICK.  They click the TITLE (which is in blue on the results page).  The Title is an active hyperlink and off the surfer goes to visit your site.

This Is The Very Best Traffic That Money Cannot Buy

Your content is “editorial” and not an ad.  It’s informative, well written and provides your visitor with the answer or information they were searching for.  It is, therefore, more credible and visitors do not feel “pitched” on arrival.

You are thinking I’m getting away from the subject of this article … keywords?  I’m not.  Follow me here. Your new visitor sought out information on specific keywords they typed into the search engine; your title and description were targeted to those keywords; it grabbed their attention; and when they landed on your web page … there was keyword-targeted well written content containing the information they were searching for.  Mission accomplished …

There is a great free trial version of a keyword research tool that I highly suggest you try out if you are planning on building a list of keywords that are relevant to your product or services. Please go to: Free Keyword Research Tool

Don’t Want To Do The Keyword Research Yourself?

For a very thorough and detailed listing of keywords appropriate to your marketing niche, I will be happy to provide that professional SEO service for you. Please refer to my Keyword Research Report page for more information and pricing.