Good idea to use hidden text for SEO purposes due to picky clients not allowing additional content?

[VITALBGS]

I do SEO for eCommerce websites both in-house and for clients. A few of our clients want increased rankings but are not willing to allow us to make the changes internally to help make that happen. One of which is adding content to the webpages since 90% of them have very little to none.

I have a couple clients that are extremely picky about what can be seen on their eCommerce website. They have the site setup the way they want it but it is not SEO friendly in the slightest. The pages (including homepage) have little to no content, and the only things they want changed are things visitors CANNOT see on the webpages (META, ALT Tags etc).

The tactic i am wanting to use is often used by spammers but i have a legitimate reason to use this and wanted to know if this would be a good idea.

They are wanting to target fairly competitive keywords but are unwilling to allow any on-page changes to add any information and keywords to help with rankings. I was thinking about adding text behind images or hide the text in whatever ways to prevent the end user from viewing it (except for the search engines).

My idea was simply to add a paragraph or two of content for the search engines purely to help in ranking because they have a lot of pages that have zero content except for product image and title listings. Is this tactic recommended or does anyone have any other ideas for these type of situations.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Michael-Goode]

Hi Stephen,

Definitely, definitely don't do this. It sucks that your clients don't want to operate with you, but doing this might put them at risk of a penalty. You clearly know that the technique is used by spammers, and even though you might justify you reason, Google will not.

Have you showed your clients some articles or blog posts on the importance of content perhaps?

[KeriMorgret]

Can you afford to choose different clients?

Is there a way you can convince them of the business case of more information? Modify five medium-traffic pages with more information, and see how those products perform? Make it a business case, not just an SEO case. Find out what the most common questions are to the sales or support team, and answer those questions on the product page. Tell the client you will help reduce their costs (of support), reduce their returns, increase customer satisfaction, etc.

If they just want increased rankings, take a ten-word phrase from the page and show them they are already ranking number 1, and that it's time to focus on sales.

[AllIsWell]

Sounds like your clients want results without paying for it. You sound willing to do that, using spammer techniques, but it is not a good idea for a couple of reasons.

1. Hiding a paragraph or two of content can get the site lowered or banned by Google instead of increasing its rank. Your customers won't be happy with the cost of recovering from that. And, you will get all the blame.

2. Hiding the reality of what it takes to be ranked high in Google from your client is a dis-service to your client. They will expect more from you in the future (until they get pushed to the back of the line in search).

3. Not educating your client on the realities of needing good visible content their customers, not just the robots, can see, reflects poorly on you. Anyone in this business encounters difficult clients unwilling to pay for services is a given. It's a good learning curve for you, more than for them.

I have a client who has just come back to me and my recommendations after a year and a half of trying to get results from others promising them more for less, but never able to deliver.

When you have the confidence and experience to know what your knowledge and skills can do for your customers, and know that what you requires monetary value, than you can calmly lay it out for them.

One option is to let your client know what kind of ranking  they can get without adding content to their webpages. Then let them know what ranking they can expect by adding content and at the price you require to do the work and stay in business.

Performing black hat/spammer techniques falls on you, not your client. It's too high of a risk and price to pay for a client looking to get ahead by squeezing you dry.

[EGOL]

Tell your client that they are asking you to fight Mike Tyson with your feet tied together.

Tell them that they should not expect anything better than second rate results and an ass kicking.

Tell them that you think they are wasting 80% of the money that they spend on their site.

Tell them that you don't feel good taking their money when they have no chance of winning.

These will not be happy clients.  Who would be happy pumping money into a losing site.  It will be your fault, not theirs.

You will not be happy doing this work.

[ShaMenz]

OMG NO!!!

This entire thread is now feeling like one of those "elephant in the room" situations, so I am just going to come out and say it - that is called C-L-O-A-K-I-N-G!!! Don't do it!

The only result you are likely to see from that is a manual penalty from ALL search engines

As for your clients, the problem you have is that they think they know better than the person they hired to provide professional services. This is a situation that will not end well and the quicker you resolve it, the less damage it will do to your business and your peace of mind.

Whenever our company encounters a client who wants to call the shots like this, the response is to send them a legal disclaimer form that they are required to sign. The document basically says that they acknowledge and accept that due to their having chosen not to accept our professional advice with regard to their website,  our company can not be held responsible for any failure to achieve the desired results, including rankings, sales and/or other forms of  conversion. The document also includes an indemnity against claims as a result of any perceived failure of the campaign.

When presented with such a document and asked to sign it, the response is generally that the client either wakes up to the fact that they are hurting their own business, OR they demand to know why we would expect them to sign such a thing. The polite, but firm response is "you are making it impossible for us to do our job the way it should be done, so without this agreement in place, we will have to refuse the work". At that point, if they are not prepared to either sign or rethink, it is time to part company.

Don't fall into the trap of trying to keep a client like this unless you are protected. This sort of client will never own their mistakes and the worst thing in the world would be to find yourself being sued for a failure of their making.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Incidentally, we have only one client who has ever chosen to accept that their stipulations are likely to prevent us from achieving good results.

[VITALBGS]

The client is more concerned with image then making money. They've been told that this is not good business practice and you won't make more money because of it. They seem to be fine with that because to them like i said, it's more about how they look to the general public then how well they rank.

(they are in the fashion industry)

[CDUBP]

Using css create a div positioned left:-9999;

Create an info button or link that with

a.hover divName  {  left: 300 - or whatever !

Should work and not be spam just cool css at work !

[KeriMorgret]

Could you provide some background on the statement about not being spam? I'm more familiar with the statements that urge caution, such as this one from a Google employee (Maile Ohye) at  http://maileohye.com/html-text-indent-not-messing-up-your-rankings/.

[EGOL]

"Another truth is that using “text-indent: -9999px”, or hiding text (keeping text out of the user’s sight in a browser), is common spammer’s technique to hide off-topic keywords and/or links to manipulate search engine rankings."

She says it's SPAM.

Google has top-secret algorithms designed to detect when text is hidden/positioned off screen. If this type of hidden text is detected, our important red phone rings,

lol....   "RED PHONE"

[CDUBP]

I guess it's a matter of intent and use. I personally don't believe that just because people use this as a spam technique it should not be used in a legitimate scenario as the one described above. If each product has an info div describing the product which can be hovered over to show the text than the end result is better UX. In my opinion better UX converts better.I think as long as It is used properly and for the right reasons it's not spam.

As far as being SPAM in Google's algorithm, I don't know!

Google has top-secret algorithms designed to detect when text is hidden/positioned off screen. If this type of hidden text is detected, our important red phone rings, and this becomes one of the signals that may cause us to believe your site is deceptive.

The KEYWORD here is MAY.

May cause us to believe your site is deceptive - leads me to believe it is analyzed on a case to case basis. Which if your not spamming like hiding hidden links or 1000 words of text you'd probably be fine.

However this leads to a greater question. Should spammers hijacking legit design techniques ruin them for everyone and keep legitimate needed sites from using them due to fear of being de-indexed?

[Dr-Pete]

That's been specifically called out by Google and can definitely get you penalized. It's very dangerous. Google will not see hiding text because your client doesn't want to put up text as a legitimate use - for one simple reason. They have no way to know that. All they see is a very abused tactic in play, and they can and will penalize it.