Will "hidden" links from other websites help a website?

[kantze]

Hello there.

I manage about 10 websites for different companies in the same city.
I'm thinking of creating a page on each of them that contains links to all others.
This page will be public, crawlable by search engines but not accessible by the main page, an inner page or the menu.
This way, my customers (the owners of the websites) won't complain
that their website links to another website that is irrelevant to what they do.


Is that a good idea? Will Google count these backlinks? The companies' websites are in the same city. Will it help?

[JanviArora]

Hidden links in your content is one of the Black Hat SEO techniques which is done to manipulate Google's search rankings. Google count it as deceptive and is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. So better keep natural approach to build backlinks if you don't want those websites banned by Google. There are several other White Hat SEO techniques to rank your client websites at top positions in Google Search Engine Result Pages. Some of them are broken links building, guest posting, niche directory submissions and many more.

[ViceTemple]

As JanviArora nicely put it, hidden links are considered to be a black-hat SEO technique, which means Google doesn't look favourably on it. If, or better said when, they find that your link is hidden, you will lose the link juice and may be punished harshly. In the worst case, your entire website may get deindexed and removed from the search engine.

Now, it's up to you to decide whether you want a short-term boost or an honest, long-term approach. Personally, I wouldn't risk using hidden links, as the potential losses far outweigh the gains. I advise you to think this through carefully before you make any decision.

[voodoox]

Is that a good idea? Will Google count these backlinks? The companies' websites are in the same city. Will it help?

If it indexes it yes. But her power will be negligible. You would have to direct links to it from other sources to make it more "powerful".

[ProspectedSEO]

Hidden links are on of the Black Hat SEO techniques. It can help you improve Google’s rankings of your website.
 Website ownners create numerous websites that they use to send links to their primary websites.
This way, the primary increase their popularity in the search engine results. However, Google count it as deceptive.
So, if you don’t want your websites to be penalized by Google, and you want to improve your rankings , you can should use White Hat SEO techniques.
The best backlins that can improve your website's rank :

Editorial backlinks,
Guest blogging,
niche directories,
broken link buildinng.