I’m building a site where the client doesn’t want any ‘text’ on the home page even after I explained what I know about it helping to get her site found. It will be just images and fonts in graphic fields.
A colleague said that it would be like an ‘entry’ page with a ‘home’ page to follow and that they aren’t so good, I don’t know how that works. Any advice as to how to handle that this is only my third site, the others had text and are easily found when Googled.
Hmm… strange scenario! Well providing that you control the site completely, you could hide the text. By this I mean have a small html box with text in it somewhere on the page but have the text as small as possible and the same colour as the actual page itself - meaning that when viewed in a browser the text will be invisible (unless highlighted) and still google will be able to see it. I have used this a couple of times on pages and it works fine - google sees exactly what you put in the ‘invisible’ box… hope that helps!!
Very bad idea. Making text the same color as the page bg is how to
get blacklisted by Google and who knows who else. This is perceived
as an unfair and illegal method to achieve improved ranking.
Todd
On Apr 14, 2008, at 11:15 AM, Fergus T wrote:
Hmm… strange scenario! Well providing that you control the site
completely, you could hide the text. By this I mean have a small
html box with text in it somewhere on the page but have the text as
small as possible and the same colour as the actual page itself -
meaning that when viewed in a browser the text will be invisible
(unless highlighted) and still google will be able to see it. I
have used this a couple of times on pages and it works fine -
google sees exactly what you put in the ‘invisible’ box… hope
that helps!!
You are quite right in pointing out to your client that relevant HTML content does make a page more search engine friendly. Especially the index page.
That said your client may well want to see the true vision of ore inspiring beauty that only a solid gold wing nut that Wendy in accounts husband captured, while on a discreet visit to the factory floor with his new camera.
But, when money changes hands, the client is always right, until they are wrong, then it’s your fault oh how we laugh.
Your colleagues advice is also appropriate to, as many second generation web sites had a splash page (normally a flash based vision) that then led to the real HTML works.
So what’s best?
If it’s a done deal that your client wants only the image with ‘flamingo liver pate dansak sans serif’ as the font. Just do it, tag em’ then move on to the real home page as has already been suggested.
Alt tags and title tags will be your friend here, select the graphic and go to the inspector. Look for the alt’ tag (third tab) description which freeway will generate from the file title (you can change this if you wish)
The title tag (this is the pop up that shows up when you mouse over an image) is plumbed in manually.
Select image > main menu > item > extended - this will show an extended dialogue box for the image -
Name = title
Value = Whatever you’d like to call the image i.e - click here to enquire about this gold wing nut.
Do the same for the text i.e give it a description (click on the frame of the text to get the dialogue box up)
Although it’s not ideal, it will help the search engines ability to see at least some content.
Sometime around 13/4/08 (at 09:46 -0400) CarolynMB said:
I’m building a site where the client doesn’t want any ‘text’ on the
home page even after I explained what I know about it helping to get
her site found. It will be just images and fonts in graphic fields.
Hi Carolyn,
I’m jumping in rather late as things have been busy here. But anyway…
Whatever you do, DON’T try the ‘invisible text’ trick. As has been
pointed out already, the search engines can spot this and do actively
look for this sort of thing. This WILL cause your site to be ranked
lower at best and possibly be blacklisted altogether.
If you can persuade the client against a doorway page or entry page,
do so. The only people that actually like those things are site
owners. Visitors certainly don’t like 'em. I mean, really: what the
hell do they do for someone?
(“What are they good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again…”)
If you can’tpersuade them - then take the advice about just doing the
work and moving on. At some point, if they simply won’t see sense,
you need to just finish the job and take the money.
oh how we laugh.