Sometimes, hiding a link might seem like a good idea. If you’re a webdesigner you could possibly get away with putting a link to your own site at the bottom of each page you design saying “web design”. That way, your own site ranks better for the term “web design” thanks to all of the links out there pointing to your site.
The art takes a turn to the darkside when web designers put hidden links into their clients sites, they’re not visable in a browser but a spider reading the site can see them. These links can help to temporarily boost the search rankings of a website by increasing the number of links pointing to it, an attractive prospect to anyone wanting to move their way up the search rankings swiftly. Of course there is a consequence:
If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. Google quality guidelines
So if it turns out that your designer has been putting sneaky hidden links into your website you may find your site is removed from Googles search index, which is obviously bad news for your business. Whether you put the link there or not is none of Google’s concern, they don’t have time to figure out who placed the link up, in their eyes you are responsible for your sites content. Having hidden links in your site is a big warning sign to Google that you’re up to no good, their sophisticated tracking system will figure it and your site will be un-indexed.
If you are concerned that your designer has placed some sneaky links in your source code you can check using a free piece of software called Xenu. It’s available here and will scan through your site for all outgoing links. If anything looks a little suspect, take your designer up on it and clarify what it is.
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