Hidden keywords = Bad???

[JonyTek]

Hi again guys. I have just put together a site for my brother that his girlfriend has designed. It is basically a chopped up JPG that she made in photoshop. Therefore there is actually no text on the page. If I include a bunch of text to help in google searches but hide it visibility so that it cant be highlighted am i going to encounter problems with google???

Thanks guys.

[jamygolden]

I think it depends how you do it.

For example, if you look at the CSS-Tricks logo.

CSS-Tricks

The text is there, however, you only see an image. This is done by giving it a background and using text-indent to ‘hide’ the text.

#logo {

background:url("images/css-tricks.png") repeat scroll -10px -10px transparent;

display:block;

height:53px;

left:15px;

position:absolute;

text-indent:-9999px;

top:20px;

width:232px;

}

I’m not sure how google would feel about you doing a whole website like this though. I’m guessing Google wouldn’t be too happy about it.

[kevsyers]

Is there a reason you can’t get the photoshop file from her. Slice out any graphics you need and then code out the rest?

Aside from Google not liking I think it’s in bad practice to do that. That is just my opinion though.

[Bob]

Yeah I agree with kevsyers. Besides, it will probably slow down the site and increase traffic (due to it all being images).

If its made in photoshop, then the text was made there as well. Just get to know which font was used and you can code the text in html/css. That way, you can probably leave half the images out, and stay out of trouble with Google.

[JonyTek]

The site is really basic. Its for a wine bar. The homepage is a background image with 4 nav links that are set up as image rollovers using JS. For 2 pages I will be able include text (just info about the bar and the area) then for the menu and wine list I will be using a JS flipbook. The flipbook will be set up using images as we want the look to be consistent with the menus in the bar.

I have thought about it and I think this is the best option for the requirements……

[Rob MacKay]

Hiding keywords is bad – and Google will get you for it, but using text-indent isn’t. It is all about the quality of the words you are using. If you have an image, and say you use it for the background of an element (I would use a DIV in your case) you can still put in the text (in HTML format) inside the div and just hide it with text-indent. Google dosn’t look for “text-indent” hidden text, because Google dosn’t see style. Google see’s what your site looks like without the style sheet.

So if your image says “I love cats, they are cute” just add it as text into the element and text-indent it with CSS. That way when google sees the site it will see the code:

Cats are cute

I would say if you can do it with real text and remove as much of the images as possible that would be the best way to go about it though….

[TheDoc]

A really easy way to think about it is this…

Are you using hidden text to help users that need accessibility help? Or are you doing it for your own benefit (SEO)?

If it’s the former, you most likely won’t be penalized by Google. If it’s the latter, you will.

[zackw]

My company always will insert webtext and text-indent it if an image has keywords in it that we want google to see. It’s not really considered cheating – cheating would be like if you had a jewellery store and you wrote the word diamonds a million times in a paragraph tag and then hid that tag. But its good practice to use alt tags for images, use 1 H1 tag as your main title. Not that I disagree with the posts above me because whenever it is possible it is best to use real text, but in a situation where u have to use an image or if that is the level of your abilities where it is all you can do, i would include the text in correct tags and text-indent:-9999px; them

[zackw]

Example – if I decide to use some crazy text/images for my main nav, i will still put that link name inside the tag and text-indent it, the reason for this is, sometimes people view sites with the styles turned off, meaning they wouldnt see the background images of my anchor links and therefore wouldnt know where to click or where it was taking them, but by including the text inside the anchor link when the styles are turned off the text will show.. same goes for header images or headings or anything really!

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