What NOT to Do With Text

How to get your site banned

Text on each of your web pages helps search engine algorithms determine what each page is all about. This text can be anchor text in a link or just plain text in a sentence or paragraph.

Anchor text is the text in a link that you can click on. The following illustrates the anchor text concept:

Anchor text alone can sometimes move a site to the top of the rankings. If enough sites link to your site with a specific anchor text, search engines will give weight to the phrases in the anchor text in its ranking algorithm.

You can get sites to link to you in several acceptable ways:

• Reciprocal links  Many sites have reciprocal link pages that link to other sites. If you exchange enough links the search engines will find the links to your site and give added weight to the phrases in the anchor text.
• Write articles  Other sites will often post well written articles that deal with the topic of their site. You can typically include in your article a description of your web site, including a link with anchor text.
• Authoritative site  If your site has excellent material, other webmasters will link to your site as an authority. They will often use your targeted keyword phrase in their links.

Search engine algorithms also use the text on your page to help them understand the subject of your page. Using a keyword phrase a number of times on a page helps indicate to search engine algorithms the topic of your page.

But, there are some things you should not do.

The most important is to not use invisible text.

What makes text invisible?

• Color  Text using the color that is the same color as the background are invisible.
• Size  Links that are too small to see are invisible.
• Cover  Covering text using layers. Some sites place images in layers over text to hide it from visitors. Search engines still see the text.

How do you create links with invisible text? Here are two ways:

• <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR=WHITE><a href='http://www.sitename.com'>anchor text phrase</a></FONT>

• <A STYLE='font-size:1;color:#FFFFFF' HREF='http://www.sitename.com'>anchor text phrase</A>

This is small text of font size 1:This is font size 1

The following text is white: This text is white

Select the white text above (click just to the right of the word "white:" and drag to the right). You'll see the highlighted text.

When you "drag" through a site and see signs of invisible text or invisible links, you can be pretty sure that the webmaster is trying to fool--some would say, SPAM--the search engines.

Some sites will include invisible text on a page (whether anchor text in a link or just plain text) in an effort to produce a high density for their keyword phrases.

If you own several sites, you can link between sites with invisible anchor text to "encourage" search engine algorithms to use the anchor text to rank linked pages higher than they ordinarily would.

Some sites create numerous invisible links to nonexistent pages on another site. The other site will use a 404.shtml page or it the .htaccess file to direct users attempting to reach a nonexistent file to an existing page.

You can view the source of a page with invisible text to see how they are creating their invisible text or invisible links.

What if you see sites that use invisible text?

If you wish to help the search engines clean up their database of SPAMMY Web pages you can often report those sites to the search engines. This may get that site banned, or at least help the search engine managers adjust their algorithm to disregard the links.

To help Google maintain the quality of its links, go to: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Sign up for our series of tips and tools you can use right now to successfully start making money on the Internet.