I’m sitting in webinar being given by one of my competitors. He’s raised some interesting points, one of which I’ve never done before. He advises turning off the style sheet to view your website as google does. I looked at my site and it’s a bit crap – I’ve been meaning to move my menu so it appears beneath my content in the source code.

So I went to my competitor’s home page to have a look at his site without the style sheet. It looked really good. But it wasn’t using the same copy that Me as a human saw from the home page…

Here’s what their page looks like without the stylesheet: Obviously without the blur – and no, I do not have a hangover.

And here’s their offending code:

/* HEADINGS (HIDDEN) */

H1 {margin:245px 18px 0 18px;

padding:0;

text-indent:-9999px;

font-size:1px;

line-height:1px;

overflow:hidden;

}

/*HEADINGS (HIDDEN) END*/

The way they’ve linked their style sheets makes me think Google can’t index them. “Headings (Hidden)” -isn’t that just like waving a red flag, jumping up and down and launching mini missiles?

<style type=”text/css“>

@import url(‘Styles/DropDown.css’);

@import url(‘Styles/Home.css’);

@import url(‘Styles/TabbedContent.css’);

</style>
This is one of the country’s leading online marketing/seo agencies that recently sold a considerable share to an overseas investor…. Is this really how we have to play this game? Shame on you Online Marketing Agency, shame.

Rule of the day: Sometimes you shouldn’t share all your secrets as your competitors might use them against you.