Ok guys... strange question for you.
I'm working on a site for a client and for reasons that are beyond me the client insisted that the navigation be done using Flash. Problem is, we also need the site to get listed properly in the search engines.
The customer doesn't want the text navigation necessary for search engine spidering to appear anywhere on the page.
So... we have a problem.
The only solution I can think of is to hide the 'text links' in a tag and hope that the search engines pick them up.
Does anyone have any other suggestions? (I really don't want to use server side scripting to show the navigation to just the search engines as it's essential this site is listed in the search engines, therefore all black hat methods are off the options list).
Thanks guys.
Andyk
Music Rants News and Reviews | My Photoblog | Blog of a Web Designer
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
timjpriebe posted this at 17:59—2nd February 2007.
He has: 2,666 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Hide them with CSS. Spiders should still see them.
<div style="display:none;">...
[navigation html]
...
</div>
'
Something like that should work fine.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
Megan posted this at 19:17—2nd February 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Hopefully - I've heard that SE's are learning to read CSS.
Megan
My web design blog
DavidVilia posted this at 10:30—8th February 2007.
They have: 33 posts
Joined: Dec 2006
Great. Which one? Please share your experience.
Megan posted this at 20:37—8th February 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Google, from what I've heard. And from what I understand this a "might be starting to" thing, not a "does penalize for" thing so don't take it too seriously (yet)
I haven't heard anything definitive at all. However, if you know that they are starting to look for these things you might want to avoid using them for important words. It's a matter of future-proofing your site.
I definitely don't think they would ban for something like this, unless they found a lot of words being hidden (that's sepculation!). I also don't know which techniques they would be looking for - if it would just be display: or visilibity: or if they would look for negaitve positioning as well.
Matt - how do you know you've never been dinged for it? I think it would be pretty tough to tell if any one specific factor is hurting your rankings.
Megan
My web design blog
andy206uk posted this at 21:15—2nd February 2007.
He has: 1,742 posts
Joined: Jul 2002
That's what I heard... It's gonna screw up a load of webmasters that have been using image replacement techniques...
Maybe I could do:
text-indent: -9999px;height: 1px;
overflow: hidden
'
Andyk
Music Rants News and Reviews | My Photoblog | Blog of a Web Designer
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
andy206uk posted this at 19:15—8th February 2007.
He has: 1,742 posts
Joined: Jul 2002
I can't say for sure... it's something I read a while back and I can't remember where. I'm sure the SE's are keeping up with the times though and wouldn't be blind to techniques that can be used to hide text.
Andyk
Music Rants News and Reviews | My Photoblog | Blog of a Web Designer
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
teammatt3 posted this at 20:13—8th February 2007.
He has: 1,831 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
I've used hidden text using -9999px many, many times and have never been ding'd for it. But just to be safe I made the sheet external and blocked access to the directory that held it using robots.txt. It could change, but it has always worked for me. You might go all the way and throw all the text content in a -9999px so the SE's have an easier time reading it, I've done that too, no ban in years. It's not unethical, practical IMO
.
My Site | Regular Expression Tester
teammatt3 posted this at 20:58—8th February 2007.
He has: 1,831 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Getting ding'd to me is getting banned
. I don't know if it hurts the ranking, but I know it doesn't ban, yet.
My Site | Regular Expression Tester
Megan posted this at 00:49—9th February 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Ah, I see, I thought you just meant penalized in some way, not banned.
I think the most likely thing that would happen is that they would just ignore the words that were hidden with CSS. That's really the intent - they want to see what a human sees and not something different. They must be aware that there are reasons why people hide things sometimes. Unfortunately this means that people using it for reasonable purposes (i.e. dispaying graphic text instead) have problems because others abuse the technique.
Megan
My web design blog
Megan posted this at 14:05—1st March 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I was just referencing this post in another thread and realized that this could have potentially very severe implications for drop-down (fly-out or whatever you want to call them) navigation menus. If your navigation is hidden the bot wouldn't be able to crawl your site!
Megan
My web design blog
teammatt3 posted this at 23:21—1st March 2007.
He has: 1,831 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
So you're saying if you have a CSS nav bar that uses some display:none stuff, and the search engines refuse to look at anything within a style like that, your navigation wouldn't get indexed? It would be awfully difficult for a SE to tell if a link inside that style was part of a legit navigation system, or if the webmaster was trying to hide something. Great observation, Megan.
My Site | Regular Expression Tester
Megan posted this at 14:56—6th March 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I just read something the other day (sorry, forget where), saying that if Google were to ban a site for this they would get a manual review by a human first. So you wouldn't be banned for hiding stuff with CSS unless a human decided it was for spammy purposes.
Megan
My web design blog
demonhale posted this at 02:28—7th March 2007.
He has: 3,195 posts
Joined: May 2005
Actually I just use the simplest of solutions, explain to the customer about SEO, then place his flash navigation on top, and then put a duplicate html navigation in smaller texts on the footer...
razsports posted this at 22:05—21st March 2007.
They have: 26 posts
Joined: Jan 2004
I've always used CSS to design my web pages. None of my sites have ever been banned. Course I don't use hidden text or links.