Early this morning a colleague of mine mentioned a site he found with a ridiculous amount of hidden text on the home page – “Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Governor Official Website”. Coincidentally, we had discussed the ethics of this several weeks ago. In this case, the Senator’s web site included some very negative and accusatory remarks directed towards her opponent in the race for governor of Texas.

When we I looked at the page, there were literally 100’s of keywords and phrases repeated over and over in a hidden div tag in the code. I jokingly posed a question if Google would actually penalize the site for this – which looked like it might close in on the 1# organic search results for her competitor. I noticed a few hundred Twitter posts on the subject and posted my own tweet as to weather “Bad” publicity on Twitter was Good.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this was indeed bad. Google seems to have banned the site and the hidden div tag has been removed. The following article by Vanessa Fox, posted on searchengineland.com gives more details: Dear Senator (and Texas Gubernatorial Candidate) Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Here’s A Free Crash Course On SEO

Not only does this article convey a poignant and humorous message about what not to do on your website, Vanessa also gives some great and concise tips for how to do things correctly.

Internet advertising, such as Google AdWords, can help effectively market your product or service to people actively searching for related information. Like SEO, properly designed and optimized ads will present your message to your desired audience. Please be aware that an aggressive AdWords campaign is no substitute for good website content. The combination of SEO and SEM makes your ads more effective and cost efficient.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of writing content that is both informative for your reader as well as for the search engines.  The key here is that your website content must contain the keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for. Once on your site, the content should be relevant to those key words and phrases. The popularity of your site with your reader helps improve your ranking in the search engines, which helps you expose your site to more potential readers.