Text Harmful to Search Engine Rankings

You probably know that using hidden text on your pages is a no-no that can result in your site being penalized or even banned at search engines. Hidden text is when you make the text color the same as the background color of the page to hide it from your visitors while cramming keywords into your page for search engines. In other words, it's a form of spamming the search engine, and they banned the practice years ago.

Here's something about hidden text most people don't know.

Suppose you have a white background and black text. No problem. But suppose you put a blue background inside a table and use white text in the table. Some search engines won't consider the table background color, but will consider the white text in the table as an effort on your part to spam them with hidden text because the text is the same as your page's background color -- even though it's in a table with an entirely different background color!

In other words, even if the text is inside a table with a different background color, the text should never be too close to the main background color of your web page or you risk search engine penalties.

Whoa, Nellie! That's good to know and something you should consider on every page you design.

For more on search engine optimization, I offer Search Engine Optimization Strategies. These are the web design tactics I've developed for search engine placement since 1997, and they've served me well. The strategies are all search engine legal, so you won't be risking your site ranking by using questionable tactics.

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Text Harmful to Search Engine Rankings