Uh-oh, Caught using hidden text in The Valley

Hidden text is the simplest and LAMEST way to get clicks. For years I’ve noticed locals cant help but use hidden text, So here are two quick examples I just had to mention. All are design firms that take a shot at SEO, but from the looks of it –they really need to rethink their methods and take a look at Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Chakery Design:

Chakery made my list a LONG time ago, a look at http://web.archive.org/web/20060301080254/http://chakery dot com, shows hidden text on the home page about a year ago. Their current version, which I wont link to, doesn’t have the hidden text. But their SEO dedicated site chakeryseo dot com…. still uses hidden text. It’s also outdated. Update dates or have them dynamically change folks!

Double Screenshot - Normal view on top crtl+a (select all) on bottom.

Chakery is pretty big local and regional player, not sure why they’re so lazy. I haven’t checkout client websites but if they are willing to use hidden text on their own site I’m willing to bet its common practice. A simple look at their homepage shows a stupid title tag, a look at all the meta tags shows a horrible amount keywords and a long spammy description.

YOW Studios:

YOWstudios dot com offers more of the same. TINY… hidden text thats nearly laughable, and bad meta tags. Yep, just another example of terrible SEO work in the Rio Grande. By the looks of it, It’s been around for a while, http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.yowstudios dot com.

Tiny hidden text. With stuff like 'South Texas design studio, San Antonio Web Design , Ft.Worth Web Design , New York Web Design , New York City Web Design , Texas Web Design' written.

Those are two examples that rank well when searching for web design firms down here, despite the laziness, why? Because they can get away with it, if the competition took a closer look they’d probably have visited http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. *just a thought* Another common local practice you don’t have to work hard to find is keyword stuffing. More on that later.

So comon’ people, you can do better than this! Oh, I’ll be posting full sized screen shots a bit later, sorry about only showing portions, but if your curious, go to the actual sites, its still there as of 5 min. ago, or http://web.archive.org if they catch on soon.

*UPDATE* I decided not to post whole screenshots -just Google your way to them.