Using a non-visible H1
-
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!!!!
-
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."
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
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
-
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?
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
-
Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
Hello, We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page. The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31). The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores. Which of the following choices would you make? 1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA. -or- 2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | XLMarketing0 -
What are the benefits to use .bank as a TLD against the locat TLD?
One of my clients is a leading bank in my country and want to switch to .bank TLD from the local one. Does anyone have experience of what are the benefits or drawbacks of the switch? Is it really a trusted domain with all the security benefits they promise or just another low level TLD with chances to get attaced even more often than before?
Technical SEO | | Kirowski0 -
Use 301 or rel=canonical
I have a page on my site that is showing in search results at #9. I created another page on my site with the search term in the url. Wondering if I 301 or rel=canonical. Thank you, Kerry
Technical SEO | | Hydraulicgirl0 -
Duplicate Page Content for www and non-www. Help!
Hi guys, having a bit of a tough time here... MOZ is reporting duplicate content for 21 pages on eagleplumbing.co.nz, however the reported duplicate is the www version of the page. For example: http://eagleplumbing.co.nz and http://www.eagleplumbing.co.nz are considered duplicates (see screenshot attached) Currently in search console I have just updated the non-www version to be set as the preferred version (I changed this back and forth twice today because I am confused!!!). Does anyone know what the correct course of action should be in this case? Things I have considered doing include: changing the preferred version to the www version in webmaster tools, setting up 301 redirects using a wordpress plugin called Eggplant 301 redirects. I have been doing some really awesome content creation and have created some good quality citations, so I think this is only thing that is eaffecting my rank. Any help would be greatly appreciated. view?usp=sharing
Technical SEO | | QRate0 -
Is it okay to use anchor text almost exclusively for inbound links?
We are not spammy - each link is earned through a long process of relationship building and targeted guest post writing. Because of this, we like each link to have anchor text and they don't point to the same page or have the same anchor text. Is this still something to be worried about? Do we still need to include plain URLs (wwww.example.com) for some of those links?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
What hosting companies do you use & do you use dedicated servers
I am hoping the community of semoz will help me in deciding what hosting company i should use as there are hundreds of them. I have asked previously about dedicated servers but was shocked to have only received one responce. Recently i have been having nothing but problems with my hosting company so now i am trying to find a UK hosting company that can offer a dedicated server. I would be grateful if people could let me know what companies they use for their sites and if they use managed hosting companies.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Are building a page using HTML 5 better for seo?
Very general question really, but does anyone know whether Google sees html5 pages as being superior in any way to xhtml or html 4.x pages?
Technical SEO | | jimpannell0 -
Non-www to www code not working in htaccess
I use the same rewrite code on every site to consolidate the non-www and www versions. All sites in Joomla, linux hosting. Code is as follows: RewriteEngine On rewritecond %{http_host} ^site.com/ rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.site.com/$1 [R=301,L] Immediately following this code, I also rewrite /index.php to /. Thing is, I can get index.php to rewrite correctly but the non-www won't rewrite to www. I use the same code on every site but for some reason it's not working here. Are there common issues that interfere with rewriting a non-www to www in htaccess that could be interfering with the code I'm using above?
Technical SEO | | Caleone0