Google’s John Mueller answered a question in a Google SEO Office Hours hangout about hidden internal links in the footer. He explained why it’s not a big deal in terms of getting penalized but that it’s more an issue of site improvement.
That’s a little surprising because hidden links have traditionally been seen as a big issue.
Hiding Links is Not Cloaking
The person asking the question appears to have misunderstood what the word cloaking meant as he used that word to describe internal links that were hidden by the use of CSS.
Typically this can be done with the CSS display property that can make an HTML element completely disappear from a web page and not affect the layout.
The display:none CSS declaration can be used to hide links anywhere on a web page.
Screenshot of Google’s John Mueller Discussing Hidden Links
The person asking the question was concerned about a new client who he said was cloaking links on the website.
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