Invisible Keywords - Design-a-Might

Invisible Keywords

Knowing that some search engines do not recognise (or even penalise for) the data in the <input type="hidden"> field, we are left with the problem: how do I target these engines and not alter the look of my page?

Invisible keyword stuffing offers a possible solution. This tactic, too, is considered poor netiquette and can be penalised for by some search engines.

This tactic entails typing plain text into the body of your message that is the same colour as your background. These keywords take up space, but they are not visible to the web surfer. They are visible to the search engines, though.

For example, the background of a particular page is white. This is specified with the following tag:

You need to ensure the text of your stuffed keywords are the same colour. You can do this by changing the colour with the font tag:

The cryptic looking "FFFFFF" in each fields is a hexadecimal value for colour. Don't get scared off, it's really simple. In this case the "FFFFFF" refers to the colour white. To learn the codes for other colours, just do a search for "hexadecimal colour" on any good search engine and you should be able to pull up a number of good references showing the codes for several different colours.

Here are some basic colours:

black=000000
white=FFFFFF
red=FF0000
blue=0000FF
yellow=FFFF00

Remember that, unlike the hidden text field, the text still takes up space on your page. You will notice in the example above we used the phrase: size="1". This specifies that the text is the smallest possible relative size. This way you can fit more stuffed text into a space without affecting the page layout as much.

It has been rumoured, though that some engines will penalise you for using size 1 fonts...

Play around with this and you will understand. Remember, text at the top of the page is generally more effective.

Warning: Some search engines may penalise for this. Always test before you commit to one tactic or another (see Tracking Your Progress). A possible alternative that some folks are using entails changing the shade of the text just slightly. The text is still barely visible to the viewer, but the search engine sees it as a different shade.