Image as a 'h1'

by 6 replies
8
Hi there,

I'm starting optimisation on a newly built website, the majority of what would be the title of the content (what I'd optimise as a h1) are images - now I could spend some time making a text version of this image and make it as identicle to it as possible but I was wondering if using a h1 span around the image and having the span hidding is very bad for search engines or if it will work just as well as re-creating the image as text.

Thanks,

Liam
#website design #h1 tag #image #image h1
  • You can put <h1> tags around the image code and optimize both the image name and alt tag.

    If you're using graphical text the alt tag should be identical to the text displayed or else it could be considered spamming. If it's just an image your description should be accurate without keyword stuffing, for the same reason.

    Also, you mentioned multiple images but you should really use only one h1 tag, 2 at most but never more.
  • I have read numerous times that you may do this if and only if the text on the image is the same as the actual text you want to write.

    Google search engine supposedly does not check this automatically but may do sometime manually.

    In your css do this:
    Code:
    h1 {
  background-image:url('...');
  text-indent:-9999em;
}
    and this in the markup:

    Code:
    <h1>Some text</h1>
    I have been doing this on my sites and have yet to see some bad consequences.
    • [1] reply
    • This is the correct way to do it. HTML markup shows text (for the spiders) and the CSS displays an image (for the users).

      You may also want to define the width/height of the H1 in the CSS to match that of the image.
      • [1] reply
  • It really depends on what you're going for. Optimizing a site for search and to make it pleasant for a visitor at the same can be challenging.

    As far as images or text, where at all possible, easily spider read text should always be an option over images. Even if you have to put the work in to make it look nice, always use nice keyword rich text instead of images. Especially the H1 tags!

    The point of SEO
  • thanks for the answers!, and DavidO - I meant multiple images (as in multiple page images throughout the site, 1 image per page) I should have explained that sorry! I think I'll create the image in textual format and try and make it look exactly like it (just to be safe) because I keep hearing that it's a bad way to do it, but than that it's an okay way to do it somewhere else.
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    Image as a 'h1'

    Hi there, I'm starting optimisation on a newly built website, the majority of what would be the title of the content (what I'd optimise as a h1) are images - now I could spend some time making a text version of this image and make it as identicle to it as possible but I was wondering if using a h1 span around the image and having the span hidding is very bad for search engines or if it will work just as well as re-creating the image as text.