Links in natural text

[jampers]

I read on a site to put links in natural text i.e. indistinguishable from the rest of the text and only visable when you run your cursor over it.
Does anyone know if this is acceptable or frowned upon, and if it is permitted does anyone know the HTML or whatever.
Thanks
Jampers

[seobook]

when people say put them in the natural text they mean embedded in content.

within that content it is fine to leave them underlined and / or a different color.

it is generally considered bad usability if links are not underlined and the same color as the rest of the text.

[fathom]

I read on a site to put links in natural text i.e. indistinguishable from the rest of the text and only visable when you run your cursor over it.
Does anyone know if this is acceptable or frowned upon, and if it is permitted does anyone know the HTML or whatever.
Thanks
Jampers

Tend to agree with SEOBook - 'if' indistinguishable the act of rollover is merely by chance and not by need.

As for 'permitted' - well it is a usability concern so the likelihood of harming you is pretty remote.

The link element is defaulted to style="text-decoration:underline"

Adding to individual link elements style="text-decoration:none" will remove the underline and adding color as your normal body font color:#663366; so style="color:#663366;text-decoration:none;" will do it. When you 'rollover' or the 'link to' page has been visited the 'link element' changes - so not an invisable link.

or you can use a specific 'a class' in your css as: W3 Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_link2)

I would like to add there are 'good' reasons for doing this e.g.

A Tutorial where beginners need to read/complete specific tasks first [thus links in body are indistinguishable so that they don't jump ahead and miss specific quality control items.

However, a more experience level only needing a quick reference isn't limited to the beginner level [they have already been to that page - and now visible/easily accessible through the site.

In this way you don't need 'different' paths for each advance levels.

[jampers]

Thanks Fathom

[sugarrae]

I read on a site to put links in natural text i.e. indistinguishable from the rest of the text and only visable when you run your cursor over it.

It doesn't matter what the user can see - the engines will still see the link. The engines see code, not design. So, from an SE standpoint, it isn't "acceptable or frowned upon".

Only SEO advantage I can see is maybe from the fact that it allows you to scatter more links around a page for the engines to see with your desired anchor text, without making the page appear cluttered or spammy to the human user.