The debate between black hat and white hat SEO never ends. An activity that one SEO deems to be completely fair may be outright dishonest in the eyes of another. The criteria provided by search engines like Google sometimes lack clarity, which therefore detracts from the dialogue.
Hidden links and hidden content are one of those topics where the search engines are very explicit, though. The Google Guidelines provide details regarding the subject, stating that hidden text and links are not permitted. To help you find hidden links on a website, we have developed useful tips. So let’s find out where those links can be hiding and how can you get rid of them so that only good links remain on your website.
What makes you want to identify hidden text and links?
There are several reasons you might want to locate hidden content or links on a website, including the following:
- If there are any (accidental?) hidden links or content on your own website, you should check it.
- You wish to check a potential customer’s website for criminal activity.
- You wish to expose or report a rival for utilizing unethical strategies
- You want to know if search engine developers or rivals can manually find your (illegally hidden) text and links.
What resources do You require to discover hidden text and links?
There are numerous techniques you can employ to uncover concealed content and links. Even if you have access to the XML sitemap, there still may be some hidden content on a websie. One of the quickest techniques is pressing “ctrl-a” to see if any previously concealed text or links appear. This trick, however, only reveals text and links that have been concealed using the tried-and-true strategy of having them the same color as the backdrop. It is important to update the toolkit we use to conceal links and content in light of the changing strategies used to conceal them.
A powerful toolkit for finding concealed text and links is now available to you: Web Developer Toolbar and Firefox. This article will introduce you to 5 incredible hidden link checker tools that can quickly spot spam content.
A web programmer
The add-on, which is for web developers, installs as a gray bear icon in the upper right corner of Google Chrome. As users add hidden material, they typically target inline styles on components like style = “display: none,” so start by disabling them. This is a result of their inability to access your server’s stylesheet files. only have access to the content editor, such as TinyMCE, which enables them to use inline styles.
Link Grabber
This add-on may draw out all of the connections on a page and generate a report, allowing you to detect any weird links you’re connecting to. This add-on is capable of exposing strange URLs that could damage your website. The quickest method to discover hidden links would be this.
‘Inspect’ Dev Tool
Applying the “Inspect” Dev tool in your browser is another way to discover spam links Observe this hierarchy on Google Chrome: To open the console, choose Inspect from the context menu when you right-click on the page. Copy the following JavaScript code, then paste it into the console. To run the code, select a new line on the keyboard.
Dr. Link Check
Dr. Link Check advises you to look for poisonous and broken links on your website. The administrator scans every line of code on your website, looking for links, and thoroughly tests each one to ensure it works as intended.
Beginning with a start URL, the bot scans your entire website, delving deeply into the code to look into every link. Both inbound and outbound links to other websites are included in this. It continues to verify links to photos, style sheets, etc. after this.
Varvy SEO Tool
A fantastic hidden link and text-checking function are available in the Varvy SEO tool that quickly identifies hidden content. It provides you with a very thorough report on both completed and uncompleted improvements. By alternately holding down the “a” and “control” buttons on your keyboard, you can see every aspect of a web page. All text on the webpage will be highlighted as a result of this activity.
Conclusion
You may suffer from lower search engine rankings if your website contains hidden links and information. Therefore, it may also have an impact on ranking. As mentioned above, there are various strategies and resources to make sure it won’t happen. We hope you can use the process and the concepts.
