Hiding text from the search engines..

[LiamMcArthur]

I read the following when looking up SEO tips 2011:

"Towards the end of 2010 I have seen many websites just drop out of the rankings. They had been fine for over a year then all of a sudden a complete loss of rankings over night. On further inspection I noticed that a lot of these websites had hidden content when JavaScript was disabled.
I have also read somewhere (can’t remember where sorry guys) that Google now recognizes hidden content and flags it. Your site is then liable to get penalized if they feel it is not sticking to their guidelines. One of the many SEO tips I could give you for 2011 would be to avoid using this technique."

Does anyone agree with the above statement? - as I frequently hide text from the search engines, for example: creating an image-based title (since the browser doesn't recognise our corporate font, and having a h1 or span with a 'display:none' tag - an old technique though as I now just relatively position the image on top of the text ensuring the image is bigger).

[paulgl]

I don't know what "hidden content when javascript disabled" means. That
makes no sense. If content is javascript driven, it just won't show up
if javascript is turned off. That's not hiding content. Like flash. If I
have flash turned off, that content is not hidden, just not shown.

Hiding text has always been a bad idea and against google webmaster
guidelines. Nothing to do with javascript. Not sure I understand the
other either. Like not recognizing corporate font. Why not just change
the font? Most browsers are smart enough to just revert to the default
font.

Having an image for a header, title, navigation, etc. is not bad. Just
use the alt text attribute. Better for SEO to use text on your page,
but you can go around it. Using an image to hide text would be
a different story.

Hiding text comes in all flavors, like having the same font color as
the background, or blocking it with the placement of an image, etc.

There's a difference between hiding text from a visitor and hiding it
from a search engine. If google detects you are hiding it from a visitor,
that may get you a slap. If your <h1> text is the same as the image,
why not just use text? Or the image with alt? Or use both?

Stick with a common font.

Paul