Hidden Text

Hidden text is the textual content that search engines can read, but your visitors cannot read or see. It is also called Invisible or fake text.

Using such text can improve the ranking of a page, but this technique is against the guidelines of search engines and is considered a black hat SEO technique.

All major search engines treat hidden text as search spam. They can easily detect their presence and may ban your site temporarily or permanently.

Some methods to Create Hidden Text:

• The color of the content and background are kept the same to make them indistinguishable. For example, white text on a white background is a wieldy used method to create a hidden text.
• CSS is also used to hide the content, e.g., using the properties like display: none, visibility: hidden, height: 0, width: 0, etc.

Valid Reasons to Hide Content:

Although it is a black hat SEO, there are some valid reasons to hide the text.

Paid Content Subscription: The websites, which offer a paid subscription, are allowed to hide content by Google. It also supports the first click free method of cloaking, which means during the initial visit from Google, you will see the content, but during the second visit to the page, the content is no longer available, and you are required to log in and pay to view the content. It is intended to give a sample preview of what a paid subscription of a publisher is offering.

Elements of the Pages Designed for Mobile and Desktop: A responsive website can be changed and adjusted based on the size of a page. When a specific width limit is reached, some page elements may disappear, and some may appear. However, they are present in the source code at the same time and are temporarily hidden. It is intended for usability purposes, and Google is aware of these viewport formats. If you use it for proper mobile and desktop user experience, Google will not penalize your site.

Graceful Degradation: Sometimes, developers want to ensure optimal user experience with both advance and old web browsers. For example, if the browser does not support images, JavaScript, or CSS, the content will still be rendered properly. However, to enable this feature, the content for the old web browsers may be needed to be hidden on the new web browsers.