101 Articles Hidden tags That Search Engines can read
HIDDEN TAGS THAT SEARCH ENGINES CAN READ
Originally search engine algorithms were designed based on backlinks, keywords, traffic derivation etc for assessing websites. However over time website owners, SEO experts and other web developing companies realized the flaw and found a loop hole and started stuffing their websites with keywords and deriving fake backlinks. This practice improved the site's ranking and allowed it to be listed among the top 10 result set. However the contents of those particular websites were not up to the mark in terms of quality which amalgamated the efficiency of search engines and defeated its sole purpose. As a result search engines embarked upon the refinement of algorithms they employ for ranking websites and thus they started looking out for the relevancy of the contents displayed in websites and then ranking them. In fact, if such malpractices were to be found in any website, they are immediately banned from internet by these search engines.
The efficiency of these algorithms employed by search engines is still under the radar even today. Search engines have been solving problems by improving their algorithms every now and then. However spammers, hackers and other personals who undertake unethical ways to manipulate search engines and get a better ranking for their websites still find some loop holes or the other to keep persisting in the business giving issues to search engines and several other genuine website owners. These practices taken in pursuit by spammers and hackers are otherwise known as blackhat SEO techniques which are unethical methods of search engine optimization. Spammers and hackers essentially employ these tactics for
Creating hoax and having fun.
Pulling down the business of other genuine companies by affecting their websites.
For improving the rankings of their own websites and amalgamating search results for developing their own business at the cost of millions of genuine websites and web surfers.
Hidden Tags is another unethical SEO tactic employed by spammers, hackers and other unethical SEO firms.
Hidden Tags and Search Engine Optimization:
Originally when this concept came into the picture search engines had no possible means for identifying them and as a result several websites which employed this particular tactic rose in rankings abnormally creating havoc and overhead for several genuine websites, SEO firms and other web developing companies. It also created an overhead for search engines which made search engines to work on their ranking algorithms and make it more complicated for ranking websites.
There are plenty of tags defined in various scripting languages. These tags are the essence of a website. Website owners and other web developers make use of these tags to design and create their website. They also make use of the same tags to maintain a website. The same webmasters make use of these tags for performing various functions especially using tags such as comment tags, alt tags, noframes tags and http-equiv tags. Over the years of experience and maintenance of their websites, certain unethical web owners and SEO firms started using the same tags mentioned above in an unethical way by stuffing keywords in these tags.
Keywords play a crucial factor when it comes to ranking a website. Search engine algorithms consider them a lot while assessing websites. These algorithms are mathematical and automated and thus as a result they would just consider the amount of keywords present in a website as a numerical figure and thus ranked them better and higher. In the process poor quality websites with either poor content or no content at all started creeping through the result sets in higher rankings above genuine websites and amalgamating result sets which annoyed millions of web surfers as well. This manipulates search engines and defeated its sole purpose and created issues and headaches for other genuine websites, SEO firms and other web developing companies.
As an SEO expert I have come to a very good understanding with experience and here are some examples to elaborate my points.
The HTML comment tag is used for pasting comments within the webpage. However by declaring the comment tag with "!—"hides the comment from being displayed in the webpage. Unethical SEO firms and certain web masters employ this tactic to stuff keywords within the comment tag which will be crawled by search engine crawlers and spiders and as a result the website will seem to look like keyword enriched and thus will be ranked higher. The same concept applies to CSS comment tags. In these comment tags instead of using "!—"to hide a comment they employ "/*" and "*/" at the beginning and the end of the comment respectively. They can once again stuff keywords in a hidden comment making it visible only to search engine algorithms.
Noframes tag is used for hiding frames. In above example all the frames listed above noframes tag will be displayed in the webpage. However the frame source "frame_d.htm" declared under the noframes tag will not be displayed. Some web developers also make use of noframes tags and stuff with keyword and show a rich keyword content code to the search engine algorithms so as to manipulate them and get a higher ranking.
Http-equiv tag is used in Meta declarations which give a brief description about the contents of the webpage. This particular declaration can be hidden by using "!—"and "—"at the beginning and ending of the tag respectively. Once again unethical blackhat SEO following personals make use of this technique to stuff http-equiv tags with keywords and hide them from being displayed in the webpage. While search engine algorithms identify the source code and give them a good ranking based on the keyword contents.
Style tags are predominantly used in CSS style sheets. It enables web designers and developers to create a more presentable and attractive webpages which are easy to maintain as well. However, the same web developer can undertake an unethical SEO tactic by hiding certain texts from the webpage. The display: none attribute incorporated within style tags allows web creators to hide particular contents, paragraphs, headings, and links. The "<a>" attribute is used for incorporating links in the website. This is the basic building block of both internal linking as well as external linking. Backlinks also play a crucial role when it comes to deciding the fate and ranking of a website. By hiding certain links, the links won't appear in the webpage but rather will be visible in the code presented to the search engine algorithms. After proper assessments, the website is surely bound to be ranked higher than what it actually deserves because of the hidden keywords within tags and paragraphs as well as hidden backlinks.
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Sometimes, you need not even make use of style tags to hide texts and links. Traditional methods involved in hiding texts by manipulating the values of the background color and the font color of the particular texts and links. By making them equivalent in terms of the color, the text or the link won't be visible in the webpage but rather will be present in the code analyzed by search engine algorithms.
Alt tags are used by site readers for the blind to describe visual images. Basically alt tags are used for describing an image without displaying the image. It is a textual representation of the image instead of visual representation. Some unethical SEO firms and website owners stuff the textual representation with keywords which will not be visible to the normal web surfer but will be analyzed by search engine algorithms and as a result the website will rank higher than what it deserves.
Div Tags are used for creating layouts in a webpage. The layers will display banners and certain images in specific spots. Only the top most layers which are displayed in the webpage will be viewed for a normal web surfer. However these personals who stick to unethical routes to develop one's website stuff texts containing rich keywords behind these layers which are visible only to the search engine algorithms. After assessment the website will be rated higher for the hidden keywords behind layers as well.
All these tags and methodologies are employed by every unethical SEO firms, web developing companies, spammers and hackers to develop their website and their business in turn. But such measures do not last for long. After series of issues faced by search engines in terms of experience, they keep coming up with newer and more complicated algorithms to handle these issues especially when it comes to hidden texts and links. Search engines can read hidden tags as well. And as these algorithms are built to assess the relevancy of the website, they do have the quality to make a process assessment and figure out such malpractices. If such a malpractice is found to be employed in any website, the website would be banned immediately.
Hidden tags are one among the blackhat SEO techniques. Blackhat techniques are not encouraged for any website for that matter. This is primarily because of the fact that
Your website will be banned.
The techniques change frequently as per the algorithm modifications and thus it will become outdated to hurt your rankings.
It will hurt your brand or image when you do get caught for such practices.
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Screen Shots |
The above image shows the number of keywords that are stuffed in the image alt tag. This is done to obtain better ranking for the site without making the keywords visible to the users.
The below mentioned images are screen shots of images which show keyword stuffing in in various tags like alt tag, style tag, title tag etc for better SEO ranking. Adding keywords is not manipulation but stuffing keywords is certainly SEO manipulation.
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Source Code |
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References |
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Other sites that refer to the same manipulation tactic are as follows |
