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So hidden text on the web is a BAD THING, we all know that. Gone are the days when it was considered cool to stick loads of words on a page — usually at the bottom — in the same colour as the background, possibly in 5px type.

Of course the search engines got wise to this “keyword loading”: it contributed nothing to the content of the page, after all. It got dumped into that category of “Blackhat technique”.

Good content is all about value to the reader and every word should count, so stuffing lots of “invisible” text on a page is simply wasted pixels. If you want to increase the keyword densities of your pages, simply write more (or at least write better).

But hang on. Never say never. There is a very good reason for including “invisible” text on your page, and not just the correct use of alt- and title-tags.

Those with a visual impairment rely on the text on a page completely: pretty pictures make no difference to them, so make the page work for people who can only read text. That means fully explaining text links and adding blocks of text to substitute for images.

This is all achieved using the CSS attribute display: none;

Create a style called .accessible (or .ted or .jarvis or whatever, it’s not important) thus …

.accessible {display: none;}

Now, any time you want to add “hidden” text, you can do it simply by wrapping it inside this class.

That means that the phrase …

The <span class=”accessible”>cat sat on the </span>mat

renders to an ordinary browser as …

The mat

but to a screen reader as …

“The cat sat on the mat”

Of course it’s a frivolous example but you might use this technique to improve a list-based navigation.

On SmartLiveCasino.com we currently have a left nav where the code is a horrible table-based affair (I promise it will change) …

<table width="180" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"
 class="bgrleftmenu">
     <tr>
       <td width="20">
       <img src="../images/default/spacer.gif" width="20" 
        height="36"></td>
       <td colspan="2" class="headerleft">Menu</td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
       <td colspan="3">
       <img src="../images/default/spacer.gif" width="20" 
        height="8"></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td>&nbsp;</td>
       <td width="13">
       <img src="../images/default/spacer.gif" width="4" 
       height="7"></td>
       <td width="147">
       <a id="ctl00_LeftUserMenu1_LeftMenu1_hlinkHome" 
        class="linkyellow12" 
        href="default.aspx">Home</a></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>

     ...

        <td>
        <img src="../images/default/spacer.gif" width="4" 
         height="7"></td>
        <td>
        <a class="linkyellow12" 
         href="../en/help.aspx">Home</a></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td colspan="3">
       <img src="../images/default/spacer.gif" width="1" 
        height="12"></td>

     </tr>
   </table>

However, the Semantic alternative is not only much more elegant, it works better in terms of accessibility AND in terms of SEO!

<h2><span class="accessible">Site </span>Menu</h2>
   <ul>
      <a href="./." title="Go to the Home Page">
      <li>
      <span class="accessible">Go to the </span>Home<span
       class="accessible">Page</span>
      </li>
      </a>

      ...

      <a href="../en/help.aspx" title="Need Help? Get it here!">
      <li>
      <span class="accessible">Need </span>Help<span
       class="accessible">? Get it here!</span>
      </li></a>
   </ul>

In a common or garden web browser both of these would produce a standard vertical navigation …

:: Home
…
:: Help

But via a screen reader you get ..

:: Go to the Home Page
…
:: Need Help? Get it here!

“But what’s the point of all this?” I hear you cry. “Are you just being nice to blind people?”

Well, yes — and remember that a MAJORITY of the world’s population has some sight impairment — but there’s one “blind” individual that’s important to everyone interested in content and SEO: your local search engine.

Search engines, whatever flavour (but we’re all thinking Google, aren’t we) are effectively “blind”. That text-light, image-heavy page may look good to humans with perfect eyesight and a true sense of colour dynamics, but to Google it’s just a load of source code.

Make your site more accessible to those with a visual impairment and you also make it more accessible to the search engine spiders, but use a technique like this and you actually get more keywords on your page with no penalties!

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Google has just dropped a bombshell on many sites who obviously thought they’d got SERPS licked. They’ve cut huge swathes off the PageRank scores of many big name sites including engadget.com, forbes.com and problogger.net.

In some cases the figure has dropped by as many as THREE places (remember PR is not a linear scale: a PR of 2 is not just TWICE as good as a PR of 1; it’s something like SEVEN TIMES better!)

Which begs two questions …

• Why have Google done this, and
• What does it mean for the affected sites?

Taking the second first, the answer is not entirely clear. PageRank has been a controversial issue for some while now; some even argue it’s meaningless. It’s usually summed up as “the number of good sites pointing to yours”, and although the precise PR algorithm has changed since the original Google patent, it’s still largely based upon “backlinks”.

Put very simply, the better the PageRank of sites which link to yours, the better your PageRank will be. Conversely, lots of links from poor sites can actually harm your page rank; that’s one reason why link-swapping campaigns are such poor value if your site is already doing well.

Incidentally, the PR you see in the Google Toolbar or other SEO tool may be misleading: Google calculates PageRank on a regular basis, but the figure it displays to the world is “out of date” by several months.

What’s behind Google’s recent PR raid seems to be a question over the validity of these backlinks. Of late, one of the tools of the professional SEO has been to sidestep the problem of gathering backlinks by natural, organic means — which usually takes a very long time — by running “backlink campaigns”. These exercises can often run into many thousands of dollars and consist of “buying” stories on well-placed blogs, and links from directories, forums and other sites. Sites like PayPerPost.com exist solely to put willing bloggers in touch with SEOs looking for another backlink.

Recently, however, Google announced a crackdown on websites and search agencies that were buying links in order to artificially ramp-up search position (you can see a fuller list of the sites affected here). This chimes in with the search giant’s stated aim of attempting to make web searches honest — if you search for something, they argue, what you should get is a list of the most appropriate sites, not those with the biggest SEO budget. Content, once more, is king!

This leaves me in a quandary. My day job is get the free mobile phone calls site Barablu.com back on the top of the heap where it belongs, and my weapon of choice is to improve the content of the site by writing more, getting more people to contribute and making the site itself more accessible, more usable and simply more fun!

However, one thing that Barablu lacks — mainly because, unlike the competition, it’s never bothered with SEO before — is backlinks. Barablu’s current PR is 5 and that’s lower than its rivals but (these days) suddenly higher than searchengineguide.com and seo-scoop.com. Suddenly, the attractiveness of a backlinks campaign is less than it was.

Besides, these days PageRank is just one of a hundred or so metrics used by Google to order web sites. Does that make it irrelevant? At the time of writing, this very site has a PR of ZERO, yet it still tops Google searches for some terms.

Yet on reflection, I still think PR is relevant. It still seems to have some bearing over just how often your site gets indexed and how deeply and there are many other differences you notice when your Google PR increases.

So I reckon backlink campaigns will continue, only probably much more carefully, and much less visibly.

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This may not yet be the Golden Age of Content, but it IS coming. Getting those all important search engine places has, until now, been a matter of juggling organic search elements.

These include keyword factors like good meta tags, keyword density in text, internal links and even the domain name itself, domain registration age and history, good backlinks and relevance to the topical neighbourhood, the age of links and the quality of the sending domain and metrics such as the time spent on pages and the number of searches.

Google’s current algorithm certainly has some direct analysis of content beyond keyword densities, and there is some speculation that further content endorsement comes from good old human beings (search specialists will also tell you that a good route to prominent Google placement is via the The Open Directory project — dmoz.org –which is entirely human-based).

Google’s own comment on their search algorithm is simply: “Google’s complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult”.

Google watchers say the algorithm changed last year to the detriment of many existing sites using the arsenal of so-called “White Hat” tricks such as keyword density and Long Tail. One way of regaining SEO that seemed to work was increased pagination: more content. It seems as if Google (and other search engines) have good, relevant and interesting content in their sights.

But isn’t that what search engines were meant to be? Somewhere people went to find readable pages relevant to their interest.

You should take note of this now. Don’t abandon White Hat, but be aware that your site should be more than a series of search engine algorithm tricks. Content is king.

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1. Because you always have access to your content

Managing content using flat-XHTML and a code editor means you ALWAYS need a code editor. Even if you have a team running a round-the-clock service there will always be gaps. A good Content Management System or CMS means an authorised user can nip into any cybercafé in the world and change stuff to their heart’s content.

2. Because you can keep tabs on who’s doing what

Flat-XHTML is anonymous. A good CMS will include an “audit trail”, a clear record of who’s done what to which. This means sources of error can be pinpointed; ageing content can be freshened up or removed; differences in individual workloads can be managed; and weak areas can be highlighted. This may seem a little Big Brotherish but, in reality, it’s about spotlighting excellence as well as under-achievement.

3. Because you can maintain a style

Even with the world’s best-written style manual, bespoke additions to flat-XHTML content produce differences: it’s human nature to squeeze and poke things into position and cumulative, piecemeal changes can be difficult to roll back. A good CMS enforces style by limiting changes to content to those sanctioned by content managers.

4. Because it helps you to delegate

A good CMS allows access at different levels; from the Site Manager who can do anything, to the writer who can only enter and revise text. Now your website can be built by people with no internet skills, which is most of us.

5. Because things change

A good CMS allows you to change the way your site as required in the least harmful way. So, if your company totally rebrands, then the website can totally rebrand (and at much less cost). And if new rules or ways of thinking come along, you can meet the challenge easily because your content is held as raw data by the CMS.

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