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SEO Account Manager at Greenlight
19 November 2009 09:23am
Have a question. I believe that the content on the site should be done with the user in mind to make his experience better, and of cause if I can optimize a page for SEO that is great.
The problem is the agency that has been hired to do SEO wants us to create landing pages for specific keywords, when I raised the concern over the content being repetitive as all four pages cover the same subject but just optimizing for different (synonymous) phrase, they told me that we will put them in the footer and hide links with hover over and make it as unobtrusive as possible so user will only see one link in place of four.
This does not sound to me as something pure white; I can see the shade of grey in this SEO practice. The question is how grey this area is or am I just being over protective, and such things will not back lash on my site and users?
CEO at Econsultancy
23 November 2009 10:14am
Hi Tatiana
This would concern me too. It sounds like they're not actually trying to hide anything (e.g. white text on white background) but they're effectively keyword stuffing through internal links.
I'm not sure if/how exactly the search spiders would crawl those hover over links anyway (assume they're done with JavaScript...?).
I doubt these changes would backlash on your users as they wouldn't really see them. But I doubt they'll help you that much in your SEO either. I assume you work in financial services which is very competitive and I doubt a few things like this will help and, arguably, are the wrong 'mind set' for SEO.
Much better, in my view, to be focusing SEO spend and resources around quality content, online PR and social media to generate genuine interest and links.
SEO Account Manager at Greenlight
24 November 2009 10:09am
Thanks Ashley for reassurance that this is not going to work wonders. I have already started them on PR and Article writing and hopefully, we will be on track.
Instructor at Seattle Central Community College
09 December 2009 23:40pm
Hi Tatiana,
This is not only beneficial but patently on the wrong track. While it is useful to target individual pages for specific keywords (think wikipedia) it isn't good to have to hide anything. You were spot on in recoginizing grey hat techniques. There are plenty of very valid ways to attain rank that don't require hiding links or content.
As Ashley said generating quality content and links is a much better strategy.
Owner at O'Mahony Donnelly E-Business
15 December 2009 11:54am
One of my biggest challanges is using targeted keyphrases in a creative way. If you've done your research correctly the phrases will reflect what your audience is looking for, so that is a good start. Ashley's suggestions are spot on. Relevant articles reflecting these topics, on your site and other relevant sites, will provide good content for your visitors, as well as search engines. It will also attract links from quality, relevant sites.
Using 'tricks' like that is unprofessional and may get the site penalised.
Web PR Consultant at Clickthrough Marketing
15 December 2009 11:58am
It's surprising how many SEO companies seem to believe that creating multiple pages for keywords and phrases will work wonders. It definitely confuses the users who may well find the multiple pages and have to keep reading the same copy spun in different ways.
Far better to have articles and content which approaches different areas of the subject eg drill down into a topic over several pages, using multiple keywords.
This landing page obsession is often made worse by multiple calls to action on pages, rather than a single purpose page with clear copy that satisfies the user's search parameters and provides the info they were looking for in the first place!