SEO and CSS

Hello. I'm new this forum and new to SEO My first question (of many, I'm sure), is:

My company's main page is lite on text content, but very is very graphic which links to real (text) content found within the sub-pages. However, I wanted to "seed" the main (index) page with a textual description (non-meta) that explains the company and products...etc. However, I only want to use it for the spiders.

What I would like to do it is place the text in a span and then just set the span to "display:none", however I don't want to do this if it will be viewed as malicious. One thing to note is that all of the .css is external.

Thank you in advance-
hawkeye00x00

Hi hawkeye - welcome to the forums

What you propose could get you into trouble - dont do it.

You say - "I wanted to "seed" the main (index) page with a textual description (non-meta) that explains the company and products...etc. However, I only want to use it for the spiders."

Why hide it? If it is about the company and its true - maybe what you need is a creative designer that can integrate real text into a cool design.

HTH

I wanted to "seed" the main (index) page with a textual description (non-meta) that explains the company and products...etc

Your site visitors will like to know more about your company and products. You are on right track.

However, I only want to use it for the spiders.

Do you think that spiders will buy your products?

This is spam. IMO, no need to do this.

Essentially the information is contained in a flash app on the main page. So I guess I could just default to showing this text, but if they have flash they will get the flash app instead.
I'm on the fence as to whether it's spam or not. If the information represented is respective to the company and doesn't contain any links...then I feel it should be acceptable. Especially since these type of approaches can reduce production/implementation costs.

Thanks again for all your comments.
-hawkeye00x00

Put it on a page that vistors without flash will see.

Don't force your visitors to be flash-enabled; they'll just go elsewhere.

if you are serving information that is different to the search engine spider than to the user is spam, no question about it.

It would be more beneficial if you turned that flash file into text for both the search engine and the user.

Plain and simple - if you hide content for any reason, by any method, you can see potential problems in the SE's. Doesnt matter if it appears as legit to you, it is still technically SPAM.

I understand where you are coming from - I've had clients that see the visual presentation as #1 and don't understand the reality of the internet world.

While flash is certainly nice there is a serious downside to flash (or heavy use of graphic files for presentation)

1. users with older computers - they may not be able to handle the flash or large file/quantity grapics so the page loads way to slow and they give up or it just doesn't load and they are forced to give up

2. users who surf with images off.. you flash or graphic only site is now one blank page

3. users with special needs that require the use of reader software that reads the text on the page out loud (via speakers) and/or use voice comands to assist in hands free site navigation

all of these, just to name a few, require on page text and are for real people (not spiders) viewing your page - the side benefit of considering all your potential viewers is that as a by product you create a spider friendly page - think of it as the icing on the cake

Plain and simple - if you hide content for any reason, by any method, you can see potential problems in the SE's. Doesnt matter if it appears as legit to you, it is still technically SPAM.

I don't think it is necessary that simple. CSS drop-down menus do have hidden content; do they work against SEO?

Those hidden CSS drop-down menus are accessible to visitors so it's not spam.

Anything hidden (not accessible) to visitors but visible to SEs (with few exceptions like meta & comment tags) is spam; it's that plain and simple.