Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Replace Header Text With Image
-
I have a static website that I would like to retheme. I have the mockup, and its spliced. The website holds nice rankings right now, and I want to keep them in place. The one thing that will change with this new design is the header will no longer be text, but instead an image. Is there a way to ensure googlebot still sees the H1 tag header exactly how it is now but use an image for the header instead?
I dont want any blackhat tricks that will get me banned. Just wondering if there is a simple way to have googlebot see the header as text (not ALT img txt) so the site does not appear to have changed at all. (It hasnt, I only am changing the graphics and colors of background, and header image for better branding.
-
To achieve a balance between visual aesthetics and search engine interoperability, you could use a Javascript font renderer like cufon: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ - which will give you nice anti-aliasing.
Look at Google Fonts too - http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select
I would redesign & work towards getting a H1 on there rather than working backwards
-
Egol is correct.
your redesign has a cost, the desision is yours, what is more important, the HI or the design, only you know that.
-
You just need to make sure that the search engines will see your site exactly as visitors would see it. Don't try and hide anything. And I agree, try and keep the H1 tag.
And to answer your original question, the search engines have come a long way in terms of sophistication, but they still do not do so well with interpreting graphics, cookies, or javascript. Just good 'ole text.
-
I can leave the H1 tag in, I just dont know where to put it. Its my header, and the website now is VERY ugly. Maybe I will just put the H1 in there above the image, and then use a negative margin. Is that allowed?
-
You are going to use different html mark-up for the image and the h1.
They are not equivalent.
If you use the image you can add alt text but that is not going to be the same as H1 - less effective in my opinion.
If you can't get H1 into your site any other way then loss of the H1 will be part of the cost of your redesign.
If this was my site I would not give up H1 for an artsy image.
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
-
Optimal use of keywords in header tag
what does optimal use of keywords in header tag actually mean given you indicate this as hurting seo factor?
Technical SEO | | Serg1550 -
CSS background image links bad for seo?
On one of the websites I manage SEO for, the developers are changing how our graphical links are coded. They're basically coding in such away where there is no anchor text and no alt tag, so for example: So there's no anchor nor alt context for Google's crawler. How badly will this affect SEO, or is it extremely minimal and I shouldn't worry about? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JimLynch0 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Find all links in the site and anchor text
Hi, Find all links in the site and anchor text and i need this done on my own website so i know if we dont have links that are anchored to numbers and punctuations that are not seen at all. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Changing images on site without losing ranking
A number of images on my site rank very well under google image search but need to be replaced with updated versions. If I keep the file name and pixel dimensions identical will switching the image effect my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Justin450 -
#hashtag Anchor text within content
Hi, i have a question about anchor text within my sites content. It 'jumps' to content displayed further down the page via a side navigation at the top. These links don't take you away to any other page, instead take you further down the page to the relavent content. My question is this: I've noticed in the URL that the anchor text - #jumpnavlink is placed at the end of the pages URL like so.. www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php#jumpnavlink Is this creating a problem for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | SeoSheikh
Is it creating a new URL for viewers to use?
Is it ok to have lots of these running throughout my sites content pages? Many thanks for any light that is shed on this one! Cheers
Alex0 -
What is the value of english links with foreign language anchor text for a foreign site?
I have a site in Spanish that is hosted in Spain with a .es TLD. I already have many Spanish-language links from websites in Spain, but I obviously want more and I'm finding I might need to look beyond typical Spanish sites. In talking to some of my link builders who work on my English/American sites, they are recommending that I build links on the normal article sites, blogs and web 2.0 sites that I normally build links on but that I make all the content English and insert the anchor text in Spanish. For example, if my site were about "weightloss", my keyword would be "perder peso" (in spanish). They are recommending that I have articles, reviews, etc written about weightloss in English with the anchor text "perder peso" worked into the English article. Most of the sites are English sites that are hosted in the US (article sites, web 2.0 properties, etc). My question is what is the value of these links? Does anybody have any experience with this?
Technical SEO | | jargomang0