Hidden links involve links no users or engines will ever see. However, if one digs deep into how and through what means they were created, this becomes through a link-building campaign much less straightforward.
For example, does a hidden link intentionally remain unseen by Google, or is it merely out of sight for an ordinary visitor? Who put those links there? Most importantly, many of them are put in without knowing the site’s owner; it leaves many questions to spell out how one finds those links and their fundamental purposes.
Can hidden links boost search rankings, or are they penalized by search engines? For publishers, the dilemma lies in embracing or avoiding them altogether.
This guide will demystify hidden links by exploring their purpose, placement, and influence on SEO. You’ll also learn to detect and address them using practical tools and strategies. Let’s get started!
What Are Hidden Links?
Hidden links are hyperlinks intentionally hidden from users but visible to search engines. The most common method is to camouflage them on the page using various formatting techniques to make them invisible to the site visitor. Yet, link equity is passed on to other websites.
Some of the common ways these links are disguised include:
- Use the same font color and style as the surrounding text.
- Linking punctuation marks, like hyphens, that users usually skip.
- Attaching URLs to image files or to hidden elements on the page.
Hidden links rarely work to yield referral traffic because users just don’t click links. So why does anybody use hidden links if they won’t result in driving traffic? For the most part, it is simply to game search engine rankings via passed link equity, which is why these practices are seen as black hat and lead to penalties upon discovery by search engines.
What’s the purpose of hidden links?
SEO Manipulation
Black hat SEO experts used hidden links to manipulate search engine algorithms. While these links are made invisible to website visitors through styling, their HTML code allows search engines to detect them. This manipulation aims to improve rankings by influencing how search engines evaluate a site’s relevance and authority.
Google’s ranking system is based on more than 200 factors, with content and backlinks being among the most significant. Links act as endorsements from other web pages, and their impact on rankings is determined by factors such as the domain authority of the referring pages, the number of referring domains, and the overall volume of inbound links.
Black hat SEO practitioners exploit these linking factors by distributing hidden links across multiple websites, creating the illusion of a robust backlink profile. The goal is to deceive search engines into perceiving the site as having a more authoritative and well-connected presence.
Malware Distribution
Attackers embed links to malicious websites within the contents of a webpage. The links are often camouflaged in such a way that it may be hard for users to detect, meaning that there is a higher probability they will click on the links accidentally.
When users click any of these covert links, they get routed through websites that download malware or ransomware-even phishing attempts. This may be the highest possible risk for compromising devices and data leakage, which again causes further security breaches.
Auditing of content by website owners is very important from time to time so that hidden links may not appear on their sites. If one fails to do so, the website’s user experience and SEO reputation will be badly affected since search engines may penalize sites for spreading malware or indulging in malicious activities.
Spamming websites
Black hat SEOs use hidden links to spam third-party websites secretly. They control partial web traffic with bots, allowing them to access many websites and place hidden backlinks without the permission of the site owner.
Spammers commonly invade active forum sites by responding to comments and embedding links inside quoted texts. In general, moderators go over every new remark; thus, they approve all posts without looking over the embedded hidden links.
Bloggers also get targeted with hidden links in the comments. Spammers camouflage them in tiny punctuation marks or make the font styling just like the rest of the text so that nobody can detect them. The more advanced spammers even compromise websites and insert hidden links into existing articles, as happened in the case of a WordPress plugin that was exploited on 200,000 sites.
These links may bring a bad reputation regarding website SEO and security. This calls for regular auditing, including proactive monitoring, to ensure latent links do not degrade the performance or integrity of the SEO website.
The impact of hidden links on SEO
The ‘hidden’ links are not without consequences, especially when the giant Google starts getting into action. The search engine has worked out crawlers to detect such links and other spam links, differentiating them from quality backlinks. Where quality, natural links improve the ranking, hidden links result in penalties.
Google has long stood clear on hidden links, developing systems to detect hidden text and links. Google has provided tools to strengthen efforts against black hat SEO tactics. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines also emphasize that using hidden text and links to manipulate search rankings violates sound SEO principles.
If hidden links are found on your website, even if you weren’t aware of them, you might be penalized and see that your site’s search visibility is reduced. Google has been more lenient when it comes to hidden internal links.
Cloaking the practice of showing different content to Google and users doesn’t always lead to penalties. Still, the best practice is to make sure all links (inbound and outbound) are visible and accessible to both users and search engines.
Instead of concealing links, a better strategy involves open optimization of the site structure that works for both SEO and user experience.
Expert opinion
Hidden links have shown that while they principally target search engines and their invisibility is experienced largely by site users; the biggest victims are always site owners, publishers, and webmasters.
How To Handle Hidden Links
Hidden links can harm your website’s SEO ranking and potentially lead to penalties from search engines like Google. Here’s how to manage hidden links effectively to safeguard your site’s SEO health and avoid penalties. Let’s follow the steps to identify and resolve hidden link issues.
1. Detect Hidden Links
The first step to effectively manage hidden links is identifying them on your website. This is crucial for safeguarding your site’s SEO health, avoiding penalties, and ensuring your link profile remains clean.
There are two primary ways to find hidden links: manually or with the help of automated tools.
If you opt for the manual route, open a web page in Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Right-click on a section and choose “View Page Source,” or press CTRL+U. This will show you the page’s source code.
Once the source code is open, use the search function (CTRL+F) and type in “href.” This will highlight all the links on the page. Carefully review each link based on context, formatting, anchor text, and placement to identify hidden ones.
Repeat this process across all your web pages, ensuring you don’t overlook any hidden links. You can remove these links directly from your CMS by unlinking or deleting the suspicious text.
Important: Using specialized link auditing tools can make the process faster and more efficient. Tools like Link Grabber, Inspect Dev Tool, Web Developer, and Dr. Link Check can scan your site and pinpoint hidden links. Link Grabber, for instance, is a free Chrome extension that extracts and lists all the hyperlinks on your page, helping you spot any anomalies.
Source: Getmelink
2. Block link spammers
Once you have cleaned the hidden links on your site, you should take precautionary measures to ensure it does not happen again. This means you seal all possible loopholes the spammers could use to get more hidden links.
First, an auto anti-spam system should be implemented to analyze which content is legitimate and which is spam. Such a system will help find the hidden hyperlinks in your page code and keep you on the lookout for malicious links. The thing is to make the system work properly, and the Spam attempt catches correctly, which does not stop the valid ones.
3. Secure Your Website
A good WAF will protect against hidden links injections among other risks. Where the anti-spam plugin takes care of spammy interactions, a firewall provides an extra line of defense through active monitoring and blocking of harmful traffic.
A WAF works by constantly scanning all incoming traffic to identify and prevent potential system attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other hacking attempts. Trusted options like Cloudflare, AWS, Barracuda, and Citrix WAFs provide the necessary protection, filtering, and tracking of all HTTP requests to ensure only legitimate traffic accesses your site.
This reduces your chances of allowing hidden links to pass through when you set up a WAF. You can protect your content and keep the bad guys away from it.
4. Submit for Reconsideration (If Penalized)
If Google has already penalized your website for hidden links, the last step will be sending a reconsideration request. Once you have removed all hidden links and secured your site, you can ask Google to reconsider the status of your website. You will explain what changes you have performed to clean up your website and how you will avoid violations in the future.
You should resolve all issues before the request is submitted for better chances of lifting the penalty and restoring your site’s SEO performance.
Conclusion
Hidden links are hazardous and invite penalties from search engines like Google. The links are used as manipulative tools that can work against the performance and protection of your website. That is why you must take proactive and preventive steps towards finding and eliminating hidden links to avoid going under such penalties and maintaining a clean site of trust.
Most importantly, it handles hidden links with detection methodologies, anti-spam systems, and web application firewalls. Routine auditing and thorough monitoring of incoming traffic can prevent hidden links from compromising site integrity. High transparency and adherence to SEO best practices should ensure the protection of the website and improved performance in search engines.
Frequently Asked Questions
