HIDDEN LAYER SPAM

Layers are a great way to hide your contents or links from users. Search engine spammers can hide keywords under the graphics and the users cannot see the keywords but the search engines can. Layers can be as DHTML or divs. Hidden layers are very similar to hidden DIVs. In some cases, they are literally same and used virtually the same way. You can control the layers and DIVs right from the CSS and make the content invisible to users but visible to search engines.

Hidden layers don't work anymore. There are 1000s of smart engineers working on their search engine and they are aware of these sorts of tactics used by webmasters. Google's algorithm can easily detect hidden layers. Some webmasters use to hide text by using on: click or on: mouse over. Search engines can detect these strategies too. A well known client of mine always wanted to use this method to hide content from users even after we stressing this is bad for search engines.

But we don't have control over his ideas and we have to make some changes because he wanted to do it that way. Some site owners are more concerned about stuffing their homepage or any other important page with contents so they want to hide the content from the users and they will resort to every method possible to hide their information. This is a mistake because people like to read the information and understand what that site is all about. Hiding information will not be long term profitable for any website.