Question

SEO and H1 image replacement

Asked by: alex_wareing

We have just launched a CSS redesign for a client. The site is here:
http://www.mycustomer.com/

The client is very happy with the site however they have had a lot of SEO work done to try and improve the rankings of the site.

The client read an article on google about hiding H1 tags, the main body of which is:
"
Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

    * Using white text on a white background
    * Including text behind an image
    * Using CSS to hide text
    * Setting the font size to 0

Hidden links are links that are intended to be crawled by Googlebot, but are unreadable to humans because:

    * The link consists of hidden text (for example, the text color and background color are identical).
    * CSS has been used to make tiny hyperlinks, as little as one pixel high.
    * The link is hidden in a small character - for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph
"

The client is worried that they will be penalized by google because of the H1 image replacement used on the site redesign. However the image replacement we have used is not to try and trick the search engines its to try and make the page as semantic as possible and so we can include custom typography in the company name/logo. Do you think this will cause a problem with regards to search engines and SEO?

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Asked On
2007-08-31 at 02:06:50ID22799470
Tags

image

,

h1

,

seo

,

replacement

Topics

Internet Search Engine Optimization

,

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: VirusMinusPosted on 2007-08-31 at 04:04:15ID: 19807137


General consensus is that used sparingly its ok.

Some of the big rankers do use it and they are fine.

Read these for more info:
http://sltaylor.co.uk/blog/2007/06/google-seo-css-image-replacement/

 

by: VirusMinusPosted on 2007-08-31 at 04:04:42ID: 19807139

I personally have used it and achieved good rankings.

 

by: humeniukPosted on 2007-08-31 at 19:13:48ID: 19812338

Google takes hidden content very seriously and this method could be used to hide content.  But it is also a legitimate CSS technique and not in Google's best interest to penalize people for innocently using a legitimate technique.

From that standpoint and also from direct experience working with sites using this method, I don't think it is a problem and it is very, very likely that you are safe.

However, I prefer assurances of safety rather than presumptions.  I haven't seen a case where this technique was a necessity rather than a convenience and as a result, I choose not to use it.

 

by: pmagonyPosted on 2007-09-07 at 05:53:15ID: 19847173

I too, have used this method with great success.  Theoretically, there is nothing deceiving about telling your site crawlers that your company/corporate logo is important [H1], if not one of the most important attributes on the page - especially if it has onpage text incorporated with it.

If it's all about semantics, you're in the green...

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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