When I changed hosts recently my ranking in Google disappeared totally and I have been working really hard to get it back. Having done a pile of htaccess, with proper error code handling with a specific file designed to translate error codes, serve a decent understandable message to users and also return the correct redirect code to allow Google to remove pages I no longer want included in their search results.
Sorting all of this out is no mean feat! It’s taken experimentation and some exhaustive reading of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. During one of my more recent multiple page, cross-referencing, romps through these I found something that shook me slightly…
We’re all familiar with the CSS trick to place text in links but hide the text off screen to enable you to put an image as the background, for things like logos. The CSS I personally use is:-
a span {
position: absolute;
left: -1000px;
top: auto;
width: 1px;
height: 1px;
overflow: hidden;
}
Now this has seemed fine to me, nothing sinister, no underhand blackhat SEO methods but then I read…
Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors.
Source: Google WebMaster Guidelines
Now further reading of this section has kind of lowered my worries, the article uses words like ‘excessive keywords’, which does make me feel a little better.
But now I turn to you out there, reassure me please! Google isn’t seeing these off screen links as bad is it?
Does my page rank get affected by these? If the site doesn’t bring it’s ranking up in the search engines soon I’m going to be contacting Google to request reconsideration and I don’t want to do it if things like that are going to screw me.
