SEO. How clever is the Googlebot?

[FlyTVR]

I've noticed a few togs on TP - (probably those with flash screens?) placing textual information (intended for the 'bot) at the very bottom of the page (where most people won't look).

Now, I'm pretty sure GoogleBot would be clever enough to notice if the text color was white on a white background - or maybe not?

If it is clever enough, what if the text was styled using CSS? OR - is it just not worth the risk of upsetting Google?

The other thing I've noticed by another TPer is a list of wedding venues. If you google said tog, google returns 9 pages of information from his site, each page listing a wedding venue. How clever is this? Examining the ranks, it seems to be successful.

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I know jack about SEO.

 

[KayJay]

Put it this way, it's not stupid. Google don't make billions each year for no reason. If you try and game it you will get punished.

 

[mattyh]

Indeed,

White text on a white background is an old "black hat" SEO technique that will get you banned/demoted from the Google listings.

The other thing, with the venues... IF you drop them into your sales copy and they read properly, you won't face any penalty... Focus on good quality content for your users, and rankings will follow (that's the mantra, anyway ) - I'm doing some work on my rankings at the moment and I've identified some terms I need to be higher for - Gone from P7 (nowhere), to P3 (less nowhere) so far, another two pages to go - Might be a bit more difficult now they've moved the local results into page one, so I might have to settle for Page 2!

 

[FlyTVR]

Indeed,

White text on a white background is an old "black hat" SEO technique that will get you banned/demoted from the Google listings.

The other thing, with the venues... IF you drop them into your sales copy and they read properly, you won't face any penalty... Focus on good quality content for your users, and rankings will follow (that's the mantra, anyway ) - I'm doing some work on my rankings at the moment and I've identified some terms I need to be higher for - Gone from P7 (nowhere), to P3 (less nowhere) so far, another two pages to go - Might be a bit more difficult now they've moved the local results into page one, so I might have to settle for Page 2!

Hi Matt.

Are you saying that the venue trick can get you demoted down the ranks?

Cheers.

Dav

 

[mattyh]

It depends... Have a list of all the local venues MAY get you demoted, it may not... However, having them in a body of text that reads properly would be much better.

i.e.

Having shot at various locations, including xxx, yyy, zzz

Seems better than

- xxx
- yyy
- zzz

I won't proclaim (nor should anyone else, unless they work for Google) to know how the Google algorithm works, but the best practices that come from Google are to focus on content for your customers, rather than focusing on ranking results.

Apparently.

 

[FlyTVR]

It depends... Have a list of all the local venues MAY get you demoted, it may not... However, having them in a body of text that reads properly would be much better.

i.e.

Having shot at various locations, including xxx, yyy, zzz

Seems better than

- xxx
- yyy
- zzz

I won't proclaim (nor should anyone else, unless they work for Google) to know how the Google algorithm works, but the best practices that come from Google are to focus on content for your customers, rather than focusing on ranking results.

Apparently.

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