Hidden Links – Finding Detecting CSS Tricks

One of the keys to ranking high on search engines is the number of back links you have. A backlink is defined as a site that has your link on their page.

There are a number of websites that claim they are willing to exchange links with you, but in reality, they make their pages so that the search engines never give you credit.

Why go to this trouble of hiding links? It is commonly believed that when you link to someone, you give some of the value of your page to the site you’re linking to.

I’ve listed some of the ways in which website owners trick you into believing that they are linking to you while actually hiding your link from the search engines.

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Hiding Links – method 1:

It is commonly known that websites have two urls; one with the www.[yoursite].com and [yoursite].com. Notice that one has the www in front of the site name?

The trick is to place your link on [yoursite].com which typically has less value than www.[yoursite].com.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 1:

Look at your link and make sure it’s comming from a page that has www in front of the url if this is what was part of the original offer.

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Hiding Links – Method 2:

By placing a link on a page that is deep within a website, say six clicks away from the main page, the website owner is able to give away less PR (value). Also used is a page that spiders/robots can never reach.

The idea is that pages located closer to the main page are worth more and those located deep inside the site are less valuable. If you link to their site from a page only one click away while they link back from a page that’s 5 clicks away, then they receive more value for your link.

Finding Hidden Link – - Tip 2:

Make sure you can click to the page containing the your link AND that the number of clicks are reasonable.

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Hiding Links – Method 3:

robots.txt contains information for search engines spiders. Here is an example of a robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

This entry tells the spiders to avoid any file located in the cgi-bin directory. If the web site owner places your link on a page inside this directory, it’s worthless.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 3:

Take a look at the website address, for example http://www.[somesite].com/index.htm. Type into your browser just the root url, in this case, http://www.[somesite].com and add /robots.txt

The final URL / website address will look like http://www.[somesite].com/index.htm

If the website has this file, then look at the output and make sure your page or directory is not disallowed.

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Hiding Links – Method 4:

More than 100 links on a page. It is commonly believed that only the first 100 or 200 links are counted as valid links by search engines. By placing your link on a page with 500 links it may become worthless.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 4:

Make sure there are less than 100 links on the page containing your link. Some webmasters will promise to put yours on top, but chances are you’ll drop to the bottom later on.

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Hiding Links – Method 5:

Links are sent through a links.php (or links.htm, links.asp, links.cgo, etc) page that further processes the link and sends it on to your site.

The idea is that if the search engine see this, it may not only count as a link deep inside the site, but may not count at all! Some sites place javascript around the link to hide it from the search engines; all this is done inside the links.php page.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 5:

Make sure the link is an actual link. The best way to do this is ‘view source’, then search for your website address. It should only have a ‘a href’ type link; a few good examples are inside this page’s source code which you can view.

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Hiding Links – Method 6:

A high PR site gives you a link one or two clicks away from their main page. It looks great, but a month later the PR of the site drops significantly and you are now exchanging links with a site that has little or no PR.

What they didn’t tell you is that they purchased PR for a month, then contacted you for a link exchange.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 6:

Check your links every month to make sure you haven’t been tricked.

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Hiding Links – Method 7:

Using frames to make it appear that your link is on a high PR page. They simply include an iframe tag that points to some obscure page with your link on it. The search engines never see your link but they get credit for your site linking to them.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 7:

View the source and make sure your link is on the right page!

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Hiding Links – Method 8:

Using tables to display a link on the page but have the actual link go to another site. Here is an example of code that looks like it’s linking to Microsoft, but is actually linking to Google.

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/">

<table><tr><td>
<a href="http://www.google.com">

http://www.microsoft.com

</td></tr></table>
</a>

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 8:

Follow your link! The newer browsers will detect this and display the correct URL in the status bar.

Hiding Links – Method 9:

Using CSS (cascading style sheets) to make links appear to be correct when in fact, the search engines can not follow them.

Finding Hidden Link – Tip 9:

Look at the source code to make sure the link is an ‘a href’ type link!

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