Anyone with a basic understanding of search engine optimization knows that the text on a website plays a major role in how it ranks in search engines. In fact, you could argue that a site’s written content is one of the most important things search engines look at.
So it’s easy to see why someone might wonder whether they can add sections of “hidden text” to a page. Suppose you’re not a strong writer and don’t want to spend money outsourcing content creation, but you also understand how much search engines value text. Instead of writing weak articles and forcing keywords into them, you might be tempted to place keywords in an unused area of your website, then change the font color so it matches, or nearly matches, the page background. That way, your site appears to be packed with keywords without publishing poor content or affecting the overall look and feel of the website.
This tactic is known by several names, including font matching and keyword stuffing. Whatever you call it, though, it’s a bad idea.
Why? Because it’s cheating. Google and the other major search engines value text because they want their results to be relevant. Hidden text undermines that purpose. If you’re caught using it, your website can be banned from the search engine for good.
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