Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is it bad (black hat) to have an H1 text as a text indent?
-
Is it bad practice to use a text indent through CSS for H1 text on a homepage(basically hiding h1 text)? I'm just trying to compensate for the fact that some text that should really be in the h1 tag is actually an image.
-
Thanks for the advice! That sounds like a good plan B if I can't get the developers to change the image to text. This is definitely one of the most avoidable yet most frustrating on page issues I encounter.
I guess it's time to update my documentation for development.
-
Thanks, I was just thinking that too, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
-
Hi Mike,
I'd personally say that you're fine, depending how you impliment it.
I personally believe that as long as the text that you add reads what the image contains, you're fine.
SEOmoz even use image replacement!
Good luck!
-
Hi Mike, The text-indent property can be applied to block-level elements (P, H1, etc.) to define the amount of indentation that the first line of the element should receive. The value must be a length or a percentage; percentages refer to the parent element's width. A common use of text-indent would be to indent a paragraph:
**`P { text-indent: 5em }`**
The usage of
text-indent:-9999px
to display a site logo or other image while hiding text should be avoided. It’s a technique used by web spammers trying to game search engines like Google, and is considered spammy behavior. Instead, use an tag and put the text inside itsalt
attribute.According to Matt Cuts (and some other comments) the best solution is to use an image with
alt
andtitle
attributes. Thealt
attribute is for SEO and thetitle
attribute is for accessibility. Using an image also makes sense for semantic markup. A company logo is actually an important piece of content.**`# <a< span="">href="http://stackoverflow.com"> <img< span="">src="logo.png" alt="Stack Overflow" title="Click to return to Stack Overflow homepage" /></img<></a<>`**
<code>Well, recently, I'm thinking about SEO effects with using something like h1 {text-indent: -9999px; background: url('xyz') }...
I dont think I trust this anymore to be good for SEO. And I don't mean that it's actually "good" for it, because that would certainly be bad SEO techniques. I'm just thinking that it wouldn't be too far fetched to believe that in the search algorithms that anything that is negative text indent over ABC pixels, is considered spam and either isn't registered, or even worse, effects your site negatively.</code>Hiding the contents of an H1 tag, such that the search engine is presented with textual content which is not visible to a visitor, is SEO Spamming, and can get the site banned if one of your client's competitors catches you doing it and turns you in! It is, in fact, a form of hidden text spamming (itself "Black Hat", and explicitly banned by all of the major search engines). With the offense made all the worse by the fact you are doing it with an H1 tag, rather than non-emphasized text (Due to both the power of an H1, and the real estate it would take-up if rendered on-screen) Google makes it pretty clear that hidden text spamming is prohibited. In fact, they have a web page in their anti-spam guidelines devoted to it! They also have a check-off box (the first one, in fact!) on their spam report page specifically dedicated to reporting this kind of spamming (see 3rd link - requires login). The fact that Google may not explicitly list every means of hiding keywords does not therefore make a particular spamming technique legit. Indeed, as Google states in their Webmaster guidelines (see 1st link) - "It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it." However, in this case, this method of hiding content is specifically prohibited. On their Hidden Text Spamming page (2nd link), Google lists examples of various tricks to hide content, including specifically - "Using CSS to hide text" Which is what you are proposing to do here. While implementing this with external CSS files MAY make this a bit harder for Google to detect via automated means, it is also a VERY easy technique for someone to spot. All it takes is for just ONE of your client's competitors (OR their SEO's) to wonder why the site is coming-up higher in the SERPs than they are, notice what you are doing, and turn you in to Google for spamming! Any short-term gain you may obtain from such a technique is not worth the risk of getting your client's site banned from Google. The original quote from the WebmasterWorld discussion referenced by the Search Engine Roundtable link Shaq Ali provided makes the following excellent point - "For those who may be hiding things through CSS or negatively positioning content off screen to manipulate page content, I surely wouldn't do that with any long term projects. ;) The penalty for getting busted using this technique I would imagine is a PERMANENT BAN.* No if's, and's, or but's, you're history. You'll need a pardon from the Governor to be reconsidered for inclusion. ;)" (* - Bold replaced with caps) #### Links: * [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fsupport%2Fwebmasters%2Fbin%2Fanswer%2Epy%3Fhl%3Den%26answer%3D35769&urlhash=woHy "New window will open") * [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fsupport%2Fwebmasters%2Fbin%2Fanswer%2Epy%3Fanswer%3D66353&urlhash=e5Vy "New window will open") * [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fspamreport&urlhash=UReX "New window will open") I hope that your query had been solved.
-
If he put the image within the h1, and set the alt text to what he wanted the H1 would that help? It wouldn't be ideal but it could be a workaround that would yield some results.
I agree the design should encompass the proper tags, especially the H1 and H2.
-
Hiding text through CSS is against Google's TOS. So basically it can be classified as "black hat".
Your H1 should tell your users what your page is about, if you have to hide it for whatever reason, there may be something wrong with your design.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Content in Accordion doesn't rank as well as Content in Text box?
Does content rank better in a full view text layout, rather than in a clickable accordion? I read somewhere because users need to click into an accordion it may not rank as well, as it may be considered hidden on the page - is this true? accordion example: see features: https://www.workday.com/en-us/applications/student.html
Technical SEO | Aug 24, 2017, 2:52 PM | DigitalCRO1 -
Subpage with own homepage and navigation good or bad?
Hi everybody, I have the following question. At the company I work, we deliver several services. We help people buy the right second hand car (technical inspections). But we also have an import-service. Because those services are so different, I want to split them on our website. So our main website is all about the technical inspections. Then, when you click on import, you go to www.example.com/import. A subpage with it's own homepage en navigation, all about the import service. It's like you have an extra website on the same domain. Does anyone has experience with this in terms of SEO? Thank you for your time! Kind regards, Robert
Technical SEO | Aug 22, 2017, 8:01 AM | RobertvanHeerde0 -
Word mentioned twice in URL? Bad for SEO?
Is a URL like the one below going to hurt SEO for this page? /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html I like the match the URL and H1s as close as possible but in this case it looks a bit funky. /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html
Technical SEO | Apr 19, 2016, 12:38 PM | jsilapas0 -
Templates for Meta Description, Good or Bad?
Hello, We have a website where users can browse photos of different categories. For each photo we are using a meta description template such as: Are you looking for a nice and cool photo? [Photo name] is the photo which might be of interest to you. And in the keywords tags we are using: [Photo name] photos, [Photo name] free photos, [Photo name] best photos. I'm wondering, is this any safe method? it's very difficult to write a manual description when you have 3,000+ photos in the database. Thanks!
Technical SEO | Nov 14, 2013, 9:18 PM | TheSEOGuy10 -
How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
Hello all, We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site. I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool. Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method? Would appreciate anyone's immediate response. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | Aug 29, 2013, 11:25 AM | artdivision0 -
Google Cache Version and Text Only Version are different
Across various websites we found Google cache version in the browser loads the full site and all content is visible. However when we try to view TEXT only version of the same page we can't see any content. Example: we have a client with JS scroller menu on the home page. Each scroller serves a separate content section on the same URL. When we copy paste some of the page content in Google, we can see that copy indexed in Google search results as well as showing in Cache version . But as soon as we go into Text Only version we cant see the same copy. We would like to know which version we should trust, Google cache version or the TEXT only version.
Technical SEO | Sep 13, 2012, 10:49 PM | JamesDixon700 -
Should H1 tags include location?
I have an IT services company that is based out of Denver. In the past I always used Denver in the H1 tag like this "Denver IT Support & Managed Services" or "Denver Data Center Solutions" I know that H tags are not that important any more but I still want to put them on each page. My question is in a post panda world do those look too spammy? Should I not include Denver on each page. I have about 25 service pages that I was going to do this for. Each page will be different because of the service but I was going to include Denver on each page. On that same note how, I normally put never in the title for each page. Should I rethink this also? Obvisouly I want to rank on Denver and the service. Any help on this would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | Jul 31, 2012, 3:22 AM | ZiaTG0 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | Sep 23, 2011, 2:33 AM | jwdesign0