Today I was searching for something related to “Corduroy Slacks” and I see the Site JCREW coming up in SERP’s of Google as shown in the attachment.
I click on the link and it takes me to http://www.jcrew.com/mens-clothing.jsp. I see no mention of “corduroy pants” on that landing page. I had to check “View Source” and the phrase was somewhere deeply nested within in the Source Code.
Is this a good SEO Friendly Practice. I am not a coder and don’t understand how this text is placed in the Source Code.
Need your inputs on the SEO Aspects of this practice. If you tell me its ok to use such a thing, I need to look out for a coder to see how he does these things.
Hiding search terms in the code, and not having them visible on the page can be risky and could be viewed as trying to manipulate the search engines. There are lots of examples like this all over the web, and sometimes larger brands and sites with lots of authority get a little more slack from the search engines (the search engines will never say this, but most seasoned SEOs have seen similar things).
It is best to avoid hiding search terms in the code. Create your pages from the perspective of a user and what they would want and find useful and not from the perspective of a search engine (this is the best approach). Hiding search terms in the code does not benefit a users.