Font same color as BG

[izwar]

today some guy i know that i talked to about building a site said that for his seo sites he puts a lot of content like a paragraph worth with some keywords in it and puts it 2 font with same color as background. I read in some ebooks that this is very spammy but he said that it works good for him jus using one paragraph like that and making it invisible to users. Can this hard your website if you were to do it? i think it would so i said i wasnt interested in doing it but i want to know details of why or how it works thanks.

[agua]

I have read, and I practise not to do that... it may work out in the short term - but I think eventually he will get found out.

Its an old trick called "keyword stuffing" if I remember

I would not recommend doing that at all.

[Masetek]

That will get you a 1 way ticket to bansville...

[stymiee]

That will get you a 1 way ticket to bansville...
First class ticket....

[KLB]

This is like one of the first black hat SEO tricks from the mid 90's. This was yesterday's news years ago and I think most of the major SE's have been able to detect this since before GW Bush came to power in the U.S.

As others have said using this trick is a non-stop ticket to bansville.

[Kyle]

This is like one of the first black hat SEO tricks from the mid 90's. This was yesterday's news years ago and I think most of the major SE's have been able to detect this since before GW Bush came to power in the U.S.

As others have said using this trick is a non-stop ticket to bansville.

Maybe even detectable before the first bush :P

[KLB]

Maybe even detectable before the first bush :P
No he was out by March of 1993 when Bill took over. Search engines didn't exist back then.

[Cutter]

Welcome to 1996 ;)

I don't think it will get you banned.. but you are better off just cloaking that text if thats the purpose. People say that Google detects text/background color and size.. I have never seen any evidence first hand myself but neither have I seen anyone ranking for a hot search term using that technique in this decade.

[KelliShaver]

This does bring up a question though that I've beem meaning to ask for a while now.

I sometimes will have, for instance, a header with a background image or a graphical logo with the site name on the graphic, so it looks nice and what have you, and then inside that same header, I may put the site title in an H1 tag and use CSS to hide it.

The normal user doesn't need to see the contents of the H1 tag, because they have the graphic, but someone browsing without images or CSS, or someone using a screen reader would still have the page heading there for them to read via the no-longer hidden H1 tag. This is the whole reason I do this.

Would I run into any problems wiht the SE's like that, for "hiding' content? I'm not doing it to stuff keywords. I'm doing it to make the site more accessible.

[KLB]

I sometimes will have, for instance, a header with a background image or a graphical logo with the site name on the graphic, so it looks nice and what have you, and then inside that same header, I may put the site title in an H1 tag and use CSS to hide it.
I'm fairly certain that Google and the other SEs do not or can not inteprete off page CSS.

[KelliShaver]

Thanks, Ken. I had a feeling they couldn't, but wanted to get others' thoughts on it.

[agua]

Kellishaver, Ken - I'd seriously look at asking Google or getting more advice about this one...

I have seen sites with keyword stuffing in a div which was positioned -1000px to the left.

I'm not saying what you are doing Kellishaver is the same - but how would Google differentiate between the 2?

Could you not still put your images directly on your page using alt or title tags - still in h1 tags.

[agua]

Here's a link discussing hidden text and css (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4313) with Matt Cutts (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4313#comment-26883) commenting: