I just don't get it. How can people in 2013 think Google is that dumb? A Black Hat Forum thread has a webmaster asking if his idea of hiding links using black font on black background a "smart idea."
This webmaster asked, and he asked this seriously:
My friend has a website with a PR of 3. I'm going to pay him some money to put 2 links on his homepage. The links have nothing to do with his website, so I'm thinking of asking him to just put them in the footer and making them the same color as the footer background so users can't see them. Is this a smart idea?
Really? Are there still people out there doing this stuff? I guess so. But doesn't Google catch this stuff fairly easily? I wonder if they even bother to penalize the sites doing this or if they just discredit the links? I assume they just discredit them because this is way too easy to do.
The good news is that everyone in the thread is telling this webmaster NOT to do this. One said:
No, Google will eventually find that link and slap you hard. I've never heard of such invisible links working tbh..
Sad, sad, to see this.
Forum discussion at Black Hat Forum.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for ostrich
