Html text versus a graphic of a word
-
Hello,
How much better for rankings is an html text heading (H1 text of a word at the top of a page) than a graphic of the word with an alt tag?
Thank you!
-
Thank you!
-
Thank you, Andy!
-
Short answer: fair amount and/or no point.
Alt tags have been abused so they'd be on the short list of places to watch for keyword stuffing. H1s are also on that list but fine within normal use (1-2 a page, highly visible, title length content).
With modern web fonts the only reason to use an image to replace words is a really fancy treatment of the font. Even then, use an image replacement technique so that Google has a easier time understanding the content.
http://www.zeldman.com/2012/03/01/replacing-the-9999px-hack-new-image-replacement/
Save the alt text for describing actual content images.
-
A really interesting question
h1's have been losing some strength over the past few years, and well optimized image alt tags can be quite powerful. It's worth testing.
I'd be inclined to go with the h1 (or h2) text and an alt image tag (somewhere near the first 200 words of content) to get the best bang for your buck.
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
-
HTML Visual Sitemap
Hello, Can anyone suggest the best tool for a visual HTML sitemap? I want to show what a website looks like architecturally before and be able to drag pages around visually to show an enhanced site architecture. I have looked at a few tools online but would like to try before I buy and also get recommendations. Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | AL123al1 -
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade. The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade. My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
HTML Improvements is not updated
Hi, I am using Google Webmaster to check 'HTML Improvements' errors and found that I have many Duplicate meta descriptions errors. I think that they occurred because I have change some **old URLs **to **new URLs **and then use redirect 301. This lead meta description of **old URLs **duplicate with meta description of new URLs. For example: old URL: www.abc.com/this-is-a-url--1.html and new URL: www.abc.com/this-is-a-url.html. And then use redirect 301 from www.abc.com/this-is-a-url--1.html to www.abc.com/this-is-a-url.html Who did face this problem? Please help me how to fix this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Text within a Div Crawlable?
Hi, I have a paragraph of text contained within a Div container ( ).. Is this readable by a search engine spider. Or is it better to enclose it within ? Thanks for any feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | IBMEMM0 -
Html and css errors - what do SE spiders do if they come across coding errors? Do they stop crawling the rest of the code below the error
I have a client who uses a template to build their websites (no problem with that) when I ran the site through w3c validator it threw up a number of errors, most of which where minor eg missing close tags and I suggested they fix them before I start their off site SEO campaigns. When I spoke to their web designer about the issues I was told that some of the errors where "just how its done" So if that's the case, but the validator still registers the error, do the SE spiders ignore them and move on, or does it penalize the site in some way?
On-Page Optimization | | pab10 -
Can bad text URLs hurt pages?
If you have some pages that contain plain text URLs (not anchored links) that used to be good URLs, but are now bad, either because the website shut down or because it has been acquired by someone else and is now parked (or worse) - are those URLs enough to cause quality problems? For example: This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net These aren't the only ones. And yes, I know I should fix them, but there are probably 10,000 pages like it. I will fix them, but its not something I can do in a few minutes. (this one is easy to fix programmatically, but others are a lot more complex) So my question is: do you have actual experience that these are bad enough to cause ranking problems (making them low quality)
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0 -
Anchor text on outbound links on a blog, relevancy detrimental or positive?
We have a blog related to computer support, and we have been using guest posts and promotion of those posts to boost freshness and rankings of the blog. We have been restricting outbound links to prevent words such as 'computer repair, 'computer support' etc, because we were under the impression that if we want to rank for those words, we should only allow INCOMING links with that anchor text, and that outbound links from the page, would rob the other parts of the site of the link juice this page provides. My question is, is this wrong? Should I freely allow outbound links on my blog page that contain anchor text that I my self am trying to rank for? Or was I correct initially? Current the anchor text is in 'related' industries, such as mobile apps, technology news, etc...things that google might think are 'related', but not exactly what the site is about.
On-Page Optimization | | ilyaelbert0 -
Lots of links on homepage to internal pages with keyword rich anchor text - problem?
Hi, All! We have a new potential client, that when looking at his site with a tool, we noticed that the previous SEO company they worked with filled the homepage copy with lots of keyword-rich anchor text links pointing to different pages on the site - many links going to the same page, just with different keywords. These links are not indistinguishable in format from the other text, which is why we only noticed it with a tool. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that to start with, but once all these links are there, would you recommend taking them down? Is there any conceivable chance it could help the site? Is there a significant reason to think it will harm the site? Or will it just be pretty neutral? In all that's been written (much by SEOMoz) about only the first link's anchor text counting, do subsequent links work like a no-follow in the sense that they are a waste of the link-juice of the page, or is it as if they aren't there at all? (And is "only the first link counts" still the most widely held theory, or have there been new developments since?) Thanks, All!
On-Page Optimization | | debi_zyx0