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  4. Hiding H1 with background colour

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Hiding H1 with background colour

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  • YvonneMartin
    YvonneMartin last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 9:06 AM

    Will the H1 tag be visible to the bot if it is hidden from the human eyes using background color.

    Will Google penalize my website if I hide the H1 tag using the background color so it is visible to the search engine bot but not visible to the human eye.

    If I place the H1 tag in the footer (front-end location) for the human eye but at the top of the page in HTML for the bots, will the search bot still consider this as the H1 tag and rank it accordingly

    Finally will you categorize this under blackhat ( I think it is not too sure)

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • irvingw
      irvingw last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 5:08 PM Aug 22, 2012, 5:08 PM

      I would not remove the H1 tag. Its only one of many factors in rankings but it's still important. Don't do anything shady with it just show it. It doesn't have to be huge default

      size you can style it you know.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • YvonneMartin
        YvonneMartin @YvonneMartin last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 11:56 AM Aug 22, 2012, 11:56 AM

        Thank you very much Mattew.  You have been very helpful.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Matthew_Edgar
          Matthew_Edgar @YvonneMartin last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 11:05 AM Aug 22, 2012, 11:05 AM

          Yeah, h1s really aren't that important for search. I'm sure they have some very insignificant benefit so removing them or not won't affect much. I still recommend using them for accessibility reasons though.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • YvonneMartin
            YvonneMartin @YvonneMartin last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 11:01 AM Aug 22, 2012, 11:01 AM

            Thank you again.

            It  is for design reasons as the designers think the H1 at the top does not look right with the overall design.

            Another idea I am toying with is to remove the H1 altogether ...

            No 3

            http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made

            and another article saying H1 may not be that important.

            Will you advise removing the H1 tag

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Matthew_Edgar
              Matthew_Edgar @YvonneMartin last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 10:49 AM Aug 22, 2012, 10:48 AM

              I guess it really depends on why would you do that. Typically, the H1 tag should appear toward the top of the page since it is the title of the page. Anything other than that would look weird and could be considered spammy, especially if it looks like you are trying to hide keyword rich text somewhere where only robots can see it.

              I've not tried what you are suggesting specifically but I have had pages with multiple h1 tags and Google seems to ignore those multiple h1s (to whatever extent h1s influence rankings). As a result, I would suspect something similar would happen if you were trying to hide the h1 in the footer.

              All that being said, if as part of the design you have selected to put the h1 page name in a footer but still make that h1 page name a prominent part of the page, then I suppose it wouldn't be too big of a deal where search engine spiders are concerned.

              Really though, it depends on intent. Are you trying to hide the h1? If so, don't do that because that is the point at which you cross into black hat territory and risk a penalty.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • YvonneMartin
                YvonneMartin @Matthew_Edgar last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 10:39 AM Aug 22, 2012, 10:39 AM

                Thank you Matthew.

                Your response is very helpful.

                I seem to have only one option which is to place the  H1 tag in the footer to human eyes but when you disable CSS you will see it at the top of the page.

                What is your thought on this.

                Cheers

                Matthew_Edgar YvonneMartin 4 Replies Last reply Aug 22, 2012, 11:56 AM Reply Quote 0
                • Matthew_Edgar
                  Matthew_Edgar last edited by Aug 22, 2012, 9:49 AM Aug 22, 2012, 9:49 AM

                  Yep, all of those tactics will be considered black hat and those tactics will not be likely to work. Google can see hidden text and can easily detect those kinds of tactics.

                  Here is an article more about the hidden text and other black hat techniques. Don't do any of these! 🙂
                  http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/tactics/black-hat.htm

                  YvonneMartin 1 Reply Last reply Aug 22, 2012, 10:39 AM Reply Quote 2
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