Hidden pages for SEO - yes or no?

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

During a recent meeting for providing search engine optimised web page content with the General Manager and e-commerce manager of a well-known hotel here in Bali, the GM asked the e-commerce manager: "Do you also need content for the hidden pages?"

Alarm bells immediately went off in my head, as hidden pages are considered a black hat (i.e. unethical) search engine optimisation technique. At the first available opportunity, I sent the following information about hidden pages for SEO to the GM for his consideration.

1) From SEO deals
(original article at http://www.seodeals.com.au/seoblog/?p=248)


These are pages in your web site that are visible only to a search crawler. Hidden pages can also lead to issues like hidden keywords and hidden links. Keywords and links help to boost your search rankings, so many people try to capitalize on these requirements by hiding them within the body of a web page, sometimes in a font color that perfectly matches the site background.

There’s no way around the issue of hidden pages. If you have a web site and it contains hidden pages, it’s just a matter of time before the crawler figures out that the content is part of a hidden SEO strategy. Once that’s determined by the crawler, your site ranking will drop drastically.


2) Extract from article by Sverre Sjøthun at SEO Bomb
(original article at http://www.seobomb.com/radisson-sas-busted-for-black-hat-seo-again/)

A great relationship between owner of E-guiden, Gunnar Bråthen, and I resulted in a number of provocative articles and case studies. The biggest of them all; Gunnar cracking open the Black Hat SEO techniques used on a number of large corporations in Norway, including hidden pages, horribly designed low-tech doorway pages, extensive networks of cloaking sites and redirects.


3) Extract from article at www.yaldex.com
(original article at http://www.yaldex.com/seo_tutorial_5/pg_0077.htm)

One last SEO issue concerns the damage to your SEO strategy that hidden pages can inflict. These are pages in your web site that are visible only to a search crawler. Hidden pages can also lead to issues like hidden keywords and hidden links. Keywords and links help to boost your search rankings, so many people try to capitalize on these requirements by hiding them within the body of a web page, sometimes in a font color that perfectly matches the site background.

There’s no way around the issue of hidden pages. If you have a web site and it contains hidden pages, it’s just a matter of time before the crawler figures out that the content is part of a hidden SEO strategy. Once that’s determined by the crawler, your site ranking will drop drastically.


4) Extract from a blog entry at E-Marketing & the Next-Gen SEO Theories
(original post at http://alexkalia83.blogspot.com/2006/09/there-is-desperation-among-webmasters.html)

There is desperation among webmasters today to use their targeted keyword maximum number of times inside their web page. This desire drives them towards a COMPLETE NO NO unethical means for SEO like:

        * Hidden text
        * Spamming meta tags
        * Keywords stuffing in Anchor’s & Alt’s
        * Making hidden pages (cloaking)

and many more like these…


5) Extract from web page at We6 site

The field of SEO has evolved a great deal since We6 started, and it is currently going through a very rapid period of evolution driven largely by Google. This evolution is largely aimed to weed out cheats in the system, who try to artificially raise the position of websites by devious means, known as "black hat" techniques. These include the use of devices such as link farms, hidden pages, using hidden text to stuff extra keywords onto a page etc.


There is a lot of literature about hidden pages, hidden content and hidden links on the Internet, and you can find them really easily.

The overall basic rule regarding these hidden elements for SEO is: Do not do it, or risk getting your web site blacklisted by the search engines.