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Hidden Text in SEO: What Is It and How Does It Affect SEO?

Last updated: Oct 18, 2024

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What Is Hidden Text?

Hidden text is a manipulative practice in which text or content is made invisible to the user, but is still readable by search engines.

In practice, text is hidden using a variety of methods, such as matching the text color to the background, using CSS to move the text off-screen, setting the font size to zero, or using HTML tags to make the text invisible.

The purpose of using hidden text is often to stuff numerous keywords in an attempt to rank higher in search engine results.

However, this practice is strongly discouraged as it is considered deceptive and can lead to penalties from Google.

Does Hidden Text Affect SEO?

In the context of SEO, hidden text is used to hide keywords so that they don't disrupt the user experience (UX).

Website owners use this practice to improve SEO performance by increasing keyword density and targeting specific keywords to improve the site's ranking in search results.

However, as search engine algorithms have evolved, they know how to find hidden text on web pages. This practice is categorized as black hat SEO, which is against Google's guidelines.

If search engines find hidden text on a website, they will view it as an attempt to manipulate rankings, which can result in penalties. For this reason, this practice should be avoided.

The Impact of Using Hidden Text

Since search engines consider the use of hidden text to be a serious and prohibited violation, website owners who continue to use it may face the following negative consequences:

Violating of Webmaster Guidelines: Practices hiding text is considered a manipulative practice that violates search engine guidelines, resulting in penalties that negatively affect search rankings.
Loss of Trust: Hiding text is seen as a deceptive tactic that can damage the credibility of a website with both the public and search engines, ultimately leading to lost trust in your business.
Risk of Deindexing: As search engine algorithms recognize hiding text practices as spam, your website is at risk of being removed from search results or completely deindexed.

How to Hide Text or Content Without Breaking The Rules?

Although hiding certain text is prohibited by Google, there are some legitimate and SEO-friendly ways, especially if the intention is to improve the user experience. These include:

1. Use Alt-Text for Images

If you're using hiding text to provide descriptions for images to improve search engine accessibility, alt text is a suitable solution.

Alternative text, or alt text, is descriptive text embedded in an image to help search engines and users understand the context of the image. As well as improving SEO performance, alt text also improves the user experience.

2. Use the "Read More" Button

When you have content that is too long to display but still important as additional information, you can place it behind a "Read More" button.

Figure 1: Example of using hidden text with the "Read More" element.

For instance, if users want to know more about the content, they can click the button, and if they don't, they won't be bothered by the content that fills their screen.

For example, if you're displaying a product review section on your site, you can display the first 100 characters and then add a "read more" button for the full review.

3. Create Mobile-Only Content

Another alternative to avoid hiding text is to create mobile-only content. Mobile-only content is information that is only displayed on mobile devices.

This practice is perfectly acceptable to improve the user experience, for example by hiding lengthy information to make the display more concise on mobile devices.

4. Utilize FAQ Accordion Features

Figure 2: Example of FAQ content with accordions feature.

For specific content, such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), you can take advantage of the FAQ accordion feature. This feature allows users to click on a question to show or hide the answer within it.

This feature helps you to hide answers to long questions that could clutter up the layout of your site's content. The accordion feature also makes FAQs on your site look much tidier.

5. Use Drop-Down Boxes or Icons

Similar to using "Read More" buttons, drop-down boxes or clickable icons are efficient ways to present additional information that can keep your content pages clean and organized.

You can enhance the user experience without loading all the text on a single web page. Hidden content is automatically displayed only when the user clicks the drop-down box or clickable icon.

6. Make Pop-Ups

The last method of avoiding hiding text is to display it in pop-ups. Pop-ups can be used to display additional content or special offers without cluttering the main page.

As long as the content within the pop-ups is not manipulative and does not contain keyword stuffing, their use is not prohibited by search engines.

Again, it is important to remember that Google and many other search engines prohibit the use of hidden text SEO techniques. Therefore, instead of hiding text on your website, use the alternative methods mentioned above.

In addition, if you want to improve your rankings, it is better to focus on other SEO techniques, such as keyword optimization, creating quality content, increasing backlinks, and improving the technical aspects of your website, rather than using hidden text SEO to insert keywords.