SEO Tycoon

**SunShyne** · 04-02-2007, 01:58 AM

can an expert explain to me if the H1 tag in the header area in lieu of a image can be helpful for SEO purposes?

I had a guy tell me to replace my header image with a simple H1 tag to replace it. He claimed it would magically produce fairy dust I could use to repel the ogres and increase SE ranking?

Dont know about the magic dust but what are your thoughts about H1 tagging and SEO? This might be a "you should know this already cuz its so 1998" but im a nub so explain!

thanks earners!

sunshyne

**slayerment** · 04-02-2007, 03:33 AM

From my experience H1 tags don't have an effect with Google but help with Yahoo and MSN.

**kthdsn** · 04-02-2007, 10:49 AM

The h1 tag shouldn't be used instead of a graphical header, because a graphical header is more like a logo than a heading.

The h1 tag should be used for the title of the content on each page rather than the title of your site. For example, on a blog site, the site heading (eg "my blog") can be a graphical header, and each post heading (eg "my post") should be in an h1 tag.

**WageRank** · 04-02-2007, 12:50 PM

Well, you could just wrap your img tag in an h1 tag, and put whatever text you want in the image's alt tag.

**Pearse** · 04-02-2007, 03:42 PM

When I have designers creating graphical images as titles for articles I use something like the css below. Be careful to use only text that is included in the image. This is justifiable IMO as it emphasizes the theme of the page for screen readers and is not a link, in which case I would use alt tags.

#id{
margin:0;
padding:0;
width:399px; //width of image
height:110px;//height of image
background:url("image/path.gif") top left no-repeat;
}

#id h1{
display:none;
}

**handsome rob** · 04-02-2007, 04:21 PM

Call me old school, but I still use h-tags and meta tags. People say "oh they're dead! oh they're useless!", but for the amount of trouble it takes to add them, why chance it? I won't say that either of them are as important as your title tags, though. Just don't match your h-tags to your <title> tag.

**Mike** · 04-02-2007, 07:48 PM

H tags are definitely not dead, it is a basic part of site structure. The key is to use it properly, not to try and promote a specific keyword.

As for meta tags, maybe they help, maybe they don't, but at the very least, they provide a very good description of that specific page on your site when someone comes across it in the search engine. That alone makes it worth it for me.

**Moelman** · 04-06-2007, 11:51 PM

You should use h1 tags as the title of an article or story, not as a replacement for a graphical header.

**imported_WillB** · 04-08-2007, 11:44 AM

Rob - did you say don't match H and TITLE tags?

Last I heard, you were supposed to try and provide a uniform
view of keywords across your site. Oooh, these fickle search
engines

**Pearse** · 04-10-2007, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moelman

You should use h1 tags as the title of an article or story, not as a replacement for a graphical header.

Really depends on the situation... if its a key piece of the pie and the design calls for an image due to the designs fonts then it should be replaced.

**Alex Mack** · 04-18-2007, 02:02 PM

H1 is meant for the document header, not a section header (on a blog or user-generated content site, think of each individual post as a section). H1 should most definitely be present on the page.

I use an image-replacement technique to replace my H1 with a background image. To a search engine, there is a nice juicy H1, to a screenreader there is a nice juicy H1, to your casual visitor using a graphical browser, there is the site logo.

**handsome rob** · 04-18-2007, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WillB

Rob - did you say don't match H and TITLE tags?

Last I heard, you were supposed to try and provide a uniform
view of keywords across your site. Oooh, these fickle search
engines

The way I explained it at SES last week was like this:

Read and write in words -- not HTML. The "H" in "H1" stands for "Heading". The "title" in "<title>" stands for, well, "title". If you were writing a document of any sort, would you really use the same line for both your title and your heading? Don't be Bad Company (high-five to the first classic rock lover who gets that reference).

I'm not suggesting you sacrifice keywords, because (ideally) if you're writing for your users, then important terms will make their way into your title, heading, and body copy on their own. Doesn't always have to be the same keyword(s) though... try and experiment with keywords that the search engines consider to be related to your main term(s). :whistling:

**Pearse** · 04-18-2007, 08:03 PM

An example:
<head>
<title>Bad Company Lyrics - Rock Steady</title>
</head>

<body>

<h1>Rock Steady by Bad Company</h1>
<p>Well, when I want to rock steady...</p>
<p>And stay with me a while and rock steady....</p>

</body>

Rock On!

**handsome rob** · 04-19-2007, 06:49 PM

**** close Pearse.

I was actually referring to the fact that there's a song titled "Bad Company" on an album titled "Bad Company" by the band "Bad Company".

**Alex Mack** · 04-20-2007, 08:01 PM

Quote:

I'm not suggesting you sacrifice keywords, because (ideally) if you're writing for your users, then important terms will make their way into your title, heading, and body copy on their own. Doesn't always have to be the same keyword(s) though... try and experiment with keywords that the search engines consider to be related to your main term(s).

I'm glad to hear you say that. I completely agree, natural occuring keywords in well written content is the best form of SEO, in my opinion.

**handsome rob** · 04-21-2007, 04:05 PM

Check out my blog if you're still interested in this topic. This thread got me thinking and I put up a brief case study of something I did with a client's site that added an average of 28,000 visits per month.