is this a good idea?

http://www.eicsoft.com/index.html

On this home page if you do a search on toronto through browswer you don,t get anything. But if you do view source, you see toronto with in a div statement few times.

<div style="position: absolute; width: 388px; height: 100px; z-index: 6; left: -440px; top: -642px" id="layer1">

have they put this div just for SEO? as left and top values of div are in negative, so it is not visible when you hit the home page?

I have tried searching for this site and it's not even posting up on google anywhere on their main keywords. Perhaps I was doing something wrong?

Search engines are looking for content and to the best of my knowledge they ignore styles.

However, they aren't stupid. Don't go hiding a bunch of links with css hoping for better rankings. It's an asshat move that could very easily get your site banned by the search engines, and many have. Keep the focus on relevant content. The 'tricks' don't work.

They also can tell if you make text invisible by making it the same color as the background or positioning it off screen. All those sneaky tricks are no-no's, so I assume the same would apply to a div full of links.

Enjoy!

Nothing that seems like a good trick works in the long run. Even lots of SEO can seriously harm your ratings. Better to stick to writing easy to read and valuable content.

Nothing counts better than a good resourceful content to feed the engines!

The content should be visible, original and unique of genuine value.