Using Javascript

[DoLally]

We have launched a new website, however the use of the one of the keywords (which is part of all the site links to other pages) is too high.

My developer has said (apologies for the vagueness but i am not a programmer) that he can write a bit of javascript so that Google can't see some of the keywords (and thus reducing the number of times the keyword is "seen").

Would this constitute "hidden text" or would this be an acceptable way of trying to reduce the number of times the keyword appears on the website (we can't delete any unfortunately).

^hope this makes some semblance of sense!

[david64]

Even if Google manually reviewed the site I doubt they would penalise you, but why take the risk? Although I have seen some examples of automatic penalties for hidden text.

General rule of thumb with search engines is that if it is easy that it won't do you much good. If it is easy it means that pretty much anyone can do it in which cases it becomes a poor indicator of quality and a signal that search engines won't give much credence. The idea of search engines is that they provide the best quality results. Results that contain pages with sneaky JavaScript manipulation don't fit that bill. Such manipulation is an embarrassment to search engine and thus they may penalise you.

[DoLally]

That was my thoughts TBH.

We are actually NOT trying to "cheat" the search engines, it is just that the subject is a huge subject therefore all the sub sections have this keyword attached - the only way around it is to reduce the number of navigation options (which defeats the usability of the website) as we don't want people going click, click, click, click to get to the page that interests them. :(

My understanding of hidden text was when people try to stuff keywords or hidden content (white text, white background) on to pages - we are trying to do the opposite :D but you have confirmed my concern that if it is remotely suspected we are "hiding text", we will get penalised, which would mean the end of 2 years of planning and development :eek:

[david64]

There is a microformat (http://microformats.org/wiki/robots-exclusion) that allows you to define content in HTML that should not be indexed, but I think only Yahoo have implemented it.

You would have to provide specific context of what you want to do for an answer. There are legitimate instance of where you can hide content, such as drop down menus and JS presentations. However, if you are hiding content for "SEO", it should be considered black hat.

[DoLally]

There are legitimate instance of where you can hide content, such as drop down menus.

This is one of our issues - under the drop down menus we have allowed the Search Engines to "see" all the link text - so we could legitimately stop them from doing this - this doesn't disrupt the users experience (as they can see all the links).

Right I might have the programmer have at look at this

Thanks

[justinmarch]

This is one of our issues - under the drop down menus we have allowed the Search Engines to "see" all the link text - so we could legitimately stop them from doing this

I believe that David is referring to the fact that as a user hovers over the menu the drop down appears the fact that the users action shows the hidden content is obviously not breaking the rules.

Amending the menu to hide portions of the text within the same menu could be problematic whether the remaining text appears or not.

Specifically what is the problem you are trying to solve here?

[justinmarch]

however the use of the one of the keywords (which is part of all the site links to other pages) is too high.

Just re-read this; who says that its too high, if its right for the user it cant be that bad.

It sounds like you should leave well alone.

[DoLally]

OK thanks for the replies

[Ali-v-8]

One thing i like to point out is you get penalised if you "Hide" text for "google" to read but not the browser.
There is the option of dive layers that expand out into text when clicked, but this will still be read by Google.
My option would be to get a better copy writer (i'm assuming what you're worried about is keyword stuffing), and get the content balanced out better.
If you need to talk about that term more and emphasise facts about it consider creating a page dedicated to it and use an internal link and back link it to the home page.

[fisicx]

If all the links are natural and written for the visitor not the search engines then there won't be a problem. Certainly don't hide anything with javascript.

Where you can get lots of repeated keywords is if you have wodges of pages for 'xyz in sometown' where XYZ is the business and you have a page for each town. It just looks awful especially since the location pages are often clones of each other.