Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can hidden backlinks ever be ok?
-
Hi all,
I'm very new to SEO and still learning a lot.
Is it considered a black hat tactic to wrap a link in a DIV tag, with display set to none (hidden div), and what can the repercussions be?
From what I've learnt so far, is that this is a very unethical thing to be doing, and that the site hosting these links can end up being removed from Google/Bing/etc indexes completely. Is this true?
The site hosting these links is a group/parent site for a brand, and each hidden link points to one of the child sites (similar sites, but different companies in different areas).
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the quick feedback.
This clears up things for me a bit.Thanks,
Stephen -
The separation between black hat and white hat tactics is generally a clear line. The simple question is, does the code exist for the benefit of your site's visitors or solely to manipulate search engines?
DIV tags are used to apply CSS rules to specific pieces of code. If you have a link contained in a DIV and the display set to none, that link would clearly never be seen by the site's visitors. It is apparent the link exists solely to manipulate search engine results, and therefore is a black hat tactic.
When Google and other search engines discover black hat tactics being used on a site, they will take action. The action can be relatively minor such as ignoring the link. The action could be mid-range such as removing the page containing the link from the index. At the extreme end, they can remove the entire site from the index.
Each search engine has their own internal guidelines on how to handle these issues. Some issues are handled automatically via algorithms, while other issues are handled by manual review. There are no published standards on exactly which punishments will be handed out for a given violation. It is simply best to completely avoid anything black hat.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | May 9, 2024, 5:14 PM | aliho0 -
Tools/Software that can crawl all image URLs in a site
Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png
Technical SEO | May 5, 2016, 10:08 PM | jayoliverwright0 -
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | Mar 4, 2023, 7:39 AM | RocketStats0 -
Can anyone tell me why some of the top referrers to my site are porn site?
We noticed today that 4 of the top referring sites are actually porn sites. Does anyone know what that is all about? Thanks!
Technical SEO | May 7, 2015, 6:57 AM | thinkcreativegroup1 -
Links from PubMed (nlm.nih.gov) not appearing in backlinks for articles
Content from our medical journals gets indexed by the National Library of Medicine / PubMed on a monthly basis. The link to the full article appears in the upper-right corner on PubMed, yet I'm unable to find PubMed (nlm.nih.gov) backlinks in the reporting tools. Example:
Technical SEO | Jul 31, 2014, 6:35 PM | aafpitadmin
Article Title: Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection in Children (allintitle query)
Article URL: http://www.aafp.org/afp/2011/0115/p141.html
PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21243988 The PubMed link is to http://www.aafp.org/link_out?pmid=21243988 ,
a 301 redirect to the article, http://www.aafp.org/afp/2011/0115/p141.html Any idea why this link isn't appearing in backlinks? This isn't just for one article, we have roughly 2,000 articles from 1998 to the present. Articles from the past 12-months are access-restricted, and after 12-months the articles become public.0 -
How can I Style Long "List Posts" in Wordpress?
Hi All, I have been working on a list-post which spans over 100 items. Each item on the list has a quick blurb to explain it, an image and a few resource links. I am trying to find an attractive way to present this long list post in Wordpress. I have seen several sites with long list posts however; they place their items one on top of the other which yields a VERY long page and the end user has to do a lot of scrolling. Others turn their lists into slideshows, but I have no data on how slides perform against 10-mile-long-lists which load in 1 page. I would like to do something similar to what List25.com does as they present about 5-10 items per page and they seem to have pagination. The pagination part I understand however; is there a shortcode plugin to format lists in an attractive way just like list25?
Technical SEO | Dec 27, 2013, 5:42 PM | IvanC0 -
Can hotlinking images from multiple sites be bad for SEO?
Hi, There's a very similar question already being discussed here, but it deals with hotlinking from a single site that is owned by the same person. I'm interested whether hotlinking images from multiple sites can be bad for SEO. The issue is that one of our bloggers has been hotlinking all the images he uses, sometimes there are 3 or 4 images per blog from different domains. We know that hotlinking is frowned upon, but can it affect us in the SERPs? Thanks, James
Technical SEO | Mar 8, 2013, 12:41 PM | OptiBacUK0 -
Can Google read onClick links?
Can Google read and pass link juice in a link like this? <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="#Link123" onClick="window.open('http://www.mycompany.com/example','Link123')">src="../../img/example.gif"/></a> Thanks!
Technical SEO | Apr 4, 2012, 11:30 AM | jorgediaz0