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
-
Combining adjacent image and text links
Hey, The pages on one of our sites has a lot of links on it, which I have read a couple of times can be bad for SEO, although many say don't worry too much about it. However, I was thinking to reduce links and also reduce code size combining adjacent image and text links. For example they current look like this:
On-Page Optimization | | mdeluk
"
Products page" I am thinking maybe I should change to the following:
"Products page" However, is this bad code and therefore could be bad for SEO? I have tried Googling this but couldn't seem to find anything on it.0 -
Duplicate Page Content - default.html
I am showing a duplicate content error in moz. I have site.com and site.com/default.html How can I fix that? Should I use a canonical tag? If so, how would i do that?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
Does Bolding Text Have Any Impact on SEO?
Someone told me it does but I thought that was old school way of thinking. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | tryfantasy1 -
Use of trademarks in tags and text
Does Google spider read registered trademarks (the 'R' or 'TM') or do these marks impede anything if they are featured in meta tags or text?
On-Page Optimization | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
Text in collapsed section
Does anyone have any quantifiable evidence regarding text that is collapsed - when clicked the section expands and presents the text, against just having the text on view in the page. That is, instead of having a FAQ with question followed by answer, there is a question which you click to expose/expand the answer. Could the collapsed text be potentially detrimental to ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | MickEdwards0 -
Question Re Cornerestone Page And Anchor Text For Internal/External Links
Suppose I create a cornerstone page with the targeted keyword "Dog Collars". I write a dozen articles on various dog collars and point a link from each article to my cornerstone page. Should the anchor text for the links from each of those articles to the cornerstone page be "Dog Collars" or should they vary, but still be relevant to "Dog Collars" for best SEO? Should half of them be "Dog Collars" and the other half various? Also, if I have 12 articles and all of the anchor text is already "Dog Collars", should I go back and change them so that they all don't say the same thing? If hope my question makes sense ... thanks in advance. I will give thumbs up for helpful responses and suggestions 😉
On-Page Optimization | | Humanovation0 -
How many words per page should be have?
Hi, How many words per page should we have? And how many keywords should be in there for optimal ranking> Thanks Andrew
On-Page Optimization | | Studio330 -
How long should anchor text be? Best practice for anchor text length?
site: http://www.cerritosnissan.com/index.htm On the bottom of this homepage there is an seo content area, basically right under where it says "orange county nissan" welcomes you. The internal links in this area are very long and I'm wondering why they would do this - is there any benefit to making anchor text longer? The longer the anchor text, the less each part of that anchor text passes link juice. For example, for a page about their reviews, the anchor text of the link is "See what Cerritos Nissan customers have to say about their experience at this great Orange County Nissan Dealership.". If I would have done this the anchor text would be "Cerritos Nissan Reviews" or just plain "reviews" as the anchor text. Why would they be using such long keywords as anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
0