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
-
Opinions on leaving Non-SEO Pages without a H1
This one is pestering me and i am on the fence, so i thought i'd ask the trusty Moz community for their opinion. I am running a technical / onsite audit for a client who has quite a pretty, creative and animated homepage with lots of overlaid imagery. As its primarily imagery, including their glossy typography and clickable links, the page does not have a H1. Now i know this goes against best practice, however it's unlikely the page will ever be served as an SEO landing page (in current format), so what are people's thoughts on leaving as is without a H1, considering we are not going to try and ranking the landing page for any particular keywords. Let us know your thoughts! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1230 -
Link in H1 tag?
Hi guys, We're working through a redesign of our product page and are considering the following: http://screencast.com/t/NBSsDGA9vgS3 Currently the product name (including the brand name - Arc'teryx) in this case is included in the H1 and none of the title is linked. You can see this here: http://www.evo.com/synthetic-jackets/arcteryx-atom-lt-hoodie-womens.aspx The firm we're working with is proposing keeping the entire title in the H1 but linking the brand name to the entire brand assortment. My concern is that the brand name is a critical part of the product title and should be text (not a link). Any suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | evoNick
Will0 -
Image naming best practices?
While I have found many good sources of information for naming images for SEO purposes, I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date, exhaustive and authoritative source for image names, alt tags, etc. For instance... Max characters for image name? Max hyphens? How descriptive should you be? "ice-cream-flavors-icon_._jpg" or "ice-cream-flavors.jpg" or simply "ice-cream.jpg" How similar should the image name, alt text and page title be? At what point are you overusing a keyword? Rules to follow? So much more, but you get the idea! Anyone have a good reference or an answer to all things related to images and SEO? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OSD0 -
How To Get GD Star Rating working in wordpress categories.
I want to use GD star rating so that stars show up in SERPS for my category pages. I've installed the plugin but can't see how to do it. Does anyone have any idea?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Is it ok to use the H1 tag for bullet points?
Our search results page doesn't have a typical H1 tag because adding a true header would take up space unnecessarily. Therefore, we've assigned the h1 tag to be the breadcrumb. As filters are applied, the breadcrumb grows to include these filters. This breadcrumb is coded as bullet points, even though they're not the typical style of bullet points. Here's a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/AjGC9iAYR3 For example, the breadcrumb: Home >> NYC Social Media Classes >> Adult >> Manhattan is currently coded as: | |
On-Page Optimization | | mevseo
| | * class="first"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/">Home |
| | * <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/nyc/classes/social-media/age-adults/neighborhood-manhattan" class="Selected">Search results |
| | |
| | |
| | id="cat_social-media" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setCategory('social-media')" /> |
| | # style="font-size: 12px; display: inline;">NYC Social Media Classes |
| | <label <span="">for</label>="cat_social-media"> |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="age_adults" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setAge('adults')" /><label <span="">for</label>="age_adults">Adults</nobr> |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="nbhd_manhattan" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setNeighborhood('manhattan')" /><label <span="">for</label>="nbhd_manhattan">Manhattan</nobr> |
| | |
| | | Right now that H1 tag just relates to 'NYC Social media classes', but we'd like to expand it to include both 'Manhattan' & 'Adults' - would that be ok? And if so, would it be better to put the tag before and after the tag?0 -
What image attribute should carry "anchor text" for internal linking
Newbie question: an internal link generally should carry keyword anchor text, so if the link is actually an image, what image attribute should contain the equivalent of the anchor text
On-Page Optimization | | k3nn3dy30 -
CSS background images weight impact
Hi,
On-Page Optimization | | GianniCuccu
do you think that the use of a single 1.8Mb background image sitewide could have a big negative impact and make a website disappear from SERPS? thank you0 -
How to get Google images traffic?
How to get Google images traffic? Take a look at traxnyc.com and sugest what we can improve. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0