Do images work as a H1
-
Is a h1 tag wrapped image with a optimized alt tag as effective as text wrapped in a h1 tag?
-
I agree 100% with what Theo is saying. The use of CSS to replace images has gotten to a point (from a purely aesthetic standpoint) that you cant tell the difference anymore. It is effective and considered best practice to use text when possible. It compounds your pages SEO weight and can edge out your competition if they are using images as opposed to CSS to render text in its place. Style Sheets RULE!
-
UX: if the image is missing for some reason, the Alt Text will be formatted as H1 and have to fit inside the image area. Not a pretty picture at all.
-
Really interesting that you ask this as I have just recently been researching on this exact same thing. A website where we had 4 H1 tags on homepage (not a good thing!) needed to change - to keep it to just 1. I did not want to introduce new keyword phrase and I struggled to find an existing keyword/title phrase that I could wrap the H1 with. For a sometime I was considering making the logo as H1 as the logo images ALT had the websites main keywords in it but from research and non-scientific test on a dummy site, I found that its not very affective at all.
To some extent, the effect is like an image backlink - Google does not greatly value the ALT of the image that is linking to you, as it would, had the backlink been from a text link with anchor text.
-
Most crawlers that I've used has not recognised the H1 tag wrapped in Alt text used on one of our sites. Once we have used the normal H1 tag we have seen a good increase in one of the keywords we have tried to rank for a while.
-
The functional purpose of H1 tags is to identify sections of text so CSS formatting can easily be applied such as text size, bold, font, etc. Those text modifiers don't apply to images.
I checked and enclosing an image within a H1 tag is actually valid HTML as per the W3C standards.
I doubt this idea has ever been tested to see if the alt tag was given any increased importance because it was contained in a H1 tag. I would not believe it would as the entire point is bold or enlarged text increases visibility, whereas ALT text is not visible to most readers.
This is an instance where you are making a change that does not benefit users in an effort to manipulate search rankings. I wouldn't suggest it as helpful.
-
No. Actual text is slightly more effective than an image alt text. You might want to have a look at CSS image replacement techniques?
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
-
How many hyphens are allowed in page titles or image names?
When I was going through certification, I was told it should be limited to one or two. I was curious if there is a change.
On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP0 -
Background Images and ALT text
We pretty much exclusively use background images for our sites. How do I add in alt text? I tried a Google search for this issue and the best answer I could find was "Use the 'title' tag in the containing div", but that was from 2010. Is there a better way to do it? And no, we're not going to switch to using standard images, because background images are way more slick for UX.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelGregory0 -
Image with Text
Hello, I would like to use the mouse roll over with text on the over state. My question is how to make it SEO friendly? 2 different ALT ? How is the text on the over state going to be read by the searh engines? Appreciate your help! Emmanuel
On-Page Optimization | | manu450 -
Multiple H1's
Hi, My SEOMOZ report states that I'm using two H1's on most of my pages, for example on this page: http://www.absolutepower.nl/eiwitshakes/proteine-shakes/ I only see one though. Anyone who could clarify this? Thanks! Jasper
On-Page Optimization | | Japking0 -
Home page mostly graphic image
I have a new customer that is redesigning her website. The graphic designer has designed a lovely homepage that is mostly an image with some navigation and footer area for text information. My concern is that there isn't any real call to action or anything on the homepage design other than an interesting and fun graphic. It seems like years ago this was a common practice and then later it was looked down on as not good for the user experience or SEO. What is the latest thinking on this type of design? Should the homepage (www.mysite.com) be allowed to be mostly images? Or should we focus on the optimizing the internal pages and let the homepage be more creative?
On-Page Optimization | | ChristiMc0 -
H1 tags in WordPress - could someone clarify this please?
Hey there. I am building a site and am confused by the whole H1 tag thing in WordPress, perhaps someone could clarify please? When I generate a new page or post I of course enter the page or 'post title' which generates following HTML code class="title">Used Containers So I was thinking, ok great now I have a H1 tag! Great...But no, according to the Yoast plugin (which uses a company called Linkdex for it's on page analysis) I don't have my keyword 'Used Containers' in any of my headings. I then experimented by adding another H1 heading of 'Used Containers' in my WordPress page copy area and saw that it shows up written in my page source as Used Containers (so without the class="title"> bit in my first H1). Could anyone be kind enough to explain: The difference between the two and any known impact on SEO. What is the proper way of optimizing H1 tags in WordPress? Thanks so much!
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
Optimisation for Google Images
What techniques do you use for the optimisation of images on Google. Alt tag , image title Surrounding text Anyone tested actual linking to the image url and not the page url. I have achieved hundreds of top listed images but when it gets competitive what is the most useful technique you have used. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0 -
How would you optimize thousands of images?
The majority of our images are not optimized for search. Specifically, the alt text and image title are blank. The image filenames are also not using descriptive keywords. We publish content quite frequently and this issue will be addressed within the production work flow for all images moving forward. As for the images currently existing on our site, what are some ways to scale the optimization for thousands of images that need to be optimized for alt text, title and filename? We're thinking about mechanical turk, but the problem is that we are a business magazine and have a lot of head shots of entrepreneurs that the mainstream might not recognize. Any insights would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | inc.com0