Hidden text on websites is something that many SEO professionals try to get away with, and many site owners unwittingly let them. The idea is that Google needs to see text on your website so that it can index the text, and thus rank your website. However, having 800 odd words on your homepage wouldn’t necessarily help your website convert sales, and your users might be distracted by its presence. Also, text heavy websites impact on the designer’s ‘perfect’ image of what the website should look like.
The solution? Hide the text on the website so that it can’t be seen by the user. There are many ways to do this. You could use CSS to disguise it, conceal it within a div tag or even use the old technique of making the text colour the same as the homepage. They all work at hiding text, and they all work at alerting Google to your shenanigans and risk your website being banned.
Hiding text on your site comes under the black hat SEO banner, and is something you should avoid at all costs. If your SEO company advocates hiding text on your website, you know you’ve partnered with the wrong company.
