Using a non-visible H1

[elytical]

I have a developer that wants to use style="text-indent:-9999px" to make the H1 non-visible to the user.  Being the conservative person I am, I've never tried this before and worry that Search Engines may think this is a form of cloaking.  Am I worrying about nothing?  And apologies if it's already been covered here.  I couldn't find it.  Thanks in advance!!!!

[LawrenceNeal]

From Whiteboard Friday - The Biggest SEO Mistakes SEOmoz Has Ever Made

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

"3. Recommending People Use H1 Tags with Keywords

This mistake is a little bit more subtle. For years, SEOmoz recommended including keywords in the H1 of pages. After we started doing formal machine learning correlation tests we found out that this tactic didn't actually help very much at all (including the keywords in normal text in bigger fonts worked essentially the same). This was a shame because it meant we wasted time and energy convincing our clients to update their H1s."

[Andy_Morley_TWDG]

Using that CSS wouldn't Hide it from the spiders view, it will simply "move" the H1 off the screen.

It is a pretty old "trick".

Lets not forget Heading tags are useful to site visitors to so shouldn't necessarily be hidden to them.

Users will use the headings whilst they Scan read your pages, if they can't quickly identify what the page content is about there is a danger they could simply bounce off... and you will lose them.

As for Search engines penalising you for it, I'm not too sure, is there any research which anybody can point us towards? I dont think they are reading CSS attributes just yet right?

Andy

[danatanseo]

You came to the right place for the validity you seek I frequently vet things here in the forum and it has proven very helpful in convincing other members of my team to go one way or the other. Also, I completely agree with George's suggestion to use the "alt" attribute if it is indeed an image we are talking about, but it appears we are really talking about a bonafide

tag for text with keywords in it.

That being the case. Stick to your guns and insist on it being visible. If you really feel that it disrupts the design...it would be better to leave it out than to make it invisible.

Good luck!

Dana

[elytical]

Thanks All!  So here's more detail.  The home page design was completed.  I still think H1 has some reasonable value and it didn't have one so I told him to put a keyword rich H1 in.  He felt it disrupted the existing design and executed it as above.  So....I thought I would seek "convergent validity" on the subject as a next step.

[donford]

I concur with Dana,

Hiding your H1 tag will not necessarily cause a penalty. However, if you do so you are at risk for a penalty. If a particular savvy competitor comes along and notices you are obfuscating your H1 tags and reports it, then you may get dinged. I doubt that alone would cause a problem, but if that sort of tactic is par for the course for this web developer you may be in trouble.

[GeorgeAndrews]

Read up on this Webmaster Tools guideline: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353

Note the following from the guideline if there is a very important reason for why your developer wants to use CSS to move the text off the page:

"However, not all hidden text is considered deceptive. For example, if your site includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript, images, or Flash files, using descriptive text for these items can improve the accessibility of your site."

If there is not a very important reason, and even if there is, suggest they populate the ALT attribute of the image with the text instead.

Hope this helps!

[BlueLinkERP]

The general SEO community consensus is that you should:

A. be doing what is best for the user (so not concealing the H1 tag)

B. not doing anything that could make Matt Cutts and the Google team upset

They have advised against attempting to conceal content for SEO gain so I would strongly recommend avoiding it. They have been dealing with these issues now for a LONG time, so presumably their bots can easily pick up on those tricks.

The Google bots can now "see" what is visible on the page. They discount things that are not in the visible content area so the benefit to an offset H1 would likely be none. Also: They're watching you.

[danatanseo]

Personally, I wouldn't do it. Does it work? Maybe. Or, maybe it works for a while and then Googlebot wises up and deindexes you. Is all the work you will have to go through for reconsideration going to justify hiding that tag? I'd say, definitely not.

It's just an

tag...leave it on the page and visible. Listen to your conservative gut and do what you know is the right thing. That's my two cents

[William.Lau]

I have personally created an H1 tag in an image, I didn't see no negative effects. H1 tags are not as important but should be implemented, so even if it had any impact maybe it was minuscule.

H1 tags don't generally have to be visible like in my case, it was an H1 tag for the logo. I'm not sure where you are putting the H1 tag but if its an image I say why not, but if it is a regular text, why not just keep it as an H1 without hiding?