420 Design Blog
Don’t make this ugly SEO mistake
01 Mar 2008 | Angie H
There used to be a common trend on the web several years ago that has since all but disappeared. Web designers, in an effort to get ranked well in search engines, would include keywords in a site's page using the same color as the background the text was sitting on. What resulted was "invisible text". That is, invisible to the human eye, not to browsers and screen readers. Eventually Google and other search engine developers caught on and changed their algorithms to recognize this trick as "keyword stuffing" or "keyword spam". It's a "black hat" SEO trick that some low-life designers and SEO specialists will tell you is okay. (It's not.)
Very few sites do that these days, but that doesn't mean there aren't other black hat SEO methods that are used by the aforementioned designers and SEO specialists, or the unfortunate, misinformed web designer or site owner. One method in particular came to my attention not too long ago that reminded me of the invisible text trick.
It's quite similar, but instead of using the same color text as the background, it uses a color that is close to it. This particular example is literally a snippet of a ridiculously long page of keywords. At the time of writing (and as far as I was able to find out) this isn't officially considered spam by search engines. That doesn't make it right though. Or a good idea for that matter. The poor owner of this site either doesn't know any better or got duped. You see, doing this isn't going to help your search engine rankings much. It might here and there, and may possibly give you okay exposure for a while. But at some point this isn't going to cut it.
A site that does this is likely lacking in quality, search-engine friendly content and poor, outdated HTML code. And that's just scratching the surface. The small snippet included in the screenshot clearly shows that the author has no clue as to what having a good keyword list means (never mind that it shouldn't be included on-page in the first place). So many repeated keywords can do more harm than good. And including singular and plural versions, as well as capitalized and non-capitalized versions, of keywords doesn't make much of a difference, if any.
As an example, try these two search terms in Google and see if there are any major differences in the results:
- public accountant
- Public Accountant
Search engine ranking issues aside, there are basic design, accessibility and usability principles being broken here. For starters, this blackhat tactic creates a serious eyesore for the sighted viewer. This in and of itself should be reason enough for any site owner to question it simply because it gives a bad impression. At the very least, it makes you look desperate and misinformed; two qualities that people do not want in whatever product or service they're looking for. Further, the number of words (close to 2000 by our count) gives screen readers something to choke on. Visually impaired people rely on their screen readers to "view" websites. Imagine having to hear every single one of those 2000 words read outloud to you. Wouldn't you ditch that site as fast as possible?
Truth is, if this is the type of thing that you're doing to get ranked you actually have bigger problems.