Is it bad (black hat) to have an H1 text as a text indent?
-
Is it bad practice to use a text indent through CSS for H1 text on a homepage(basically hiding h1 text)? I'm just trying to compensate for the fact that some text that should really be in the h1 tag is actually an image.
-
Thanks for the advice! That sounds like a good plan B if I can't get the developers to change the image to text. This is definitely one of the most avoidable yet most frustrating on page issues I encounter.
I guess it's time to update my documentation for development.
-
Thanks, I was just thinking that too, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
-
Hi Mike,
I'd personally say that you're fine, depending how you impliment it.
I personally believe that as long as the text that you add reads what the image contains, you're fine.
SEOmoz even use image replacement!
Good luck!
-
Hi Mike, The text-indent property can be applied to block-level elements (P, H1, etc.) to define the amount of indentation that the first line of the element should receive. The value must be a length or a percentage; percentages refer to the parent element's width. A common use of text-indent would be to indent a paragraph:
**`P { text-indent: 5em }`**
The usage of
text-indent:-9999px
to display a site logo or other image while hiding text should be avoided. It’s a technique used by web spammers trying to game search engines like Google, and is considered spammy behavior. Instead, use an tag and put the text inside itsalt
attribute.According to Matt Cuts (and some other comments) the best solution is to use an image with
alt
andtitle
attributes. Thealt
attribute is for SEO and thetitle
attribute is for accessibility. Using an image also makes sense for semantic markup. A company logo is actually an important piece of content.**`# <a< span="">href="http://stackoverflow.com"> <img< span="">src="logo.png" alt="Stack Overflow" title="Click to return to Stack Overflow homepage" /></img<></a<>`**
<code>Well, recently, I'm thinking about SEO effects with using something like h1 {text-indent: -9999px; background: url('xyz') }...
I dont think I trust this anymore to be good for SEO. And I don't mean that it's actually "good" for it, because that would certainly be bad SEO techniques. I'm just thinking that it wouldn't be too far fetched to believe that in the search algorithms that anything that is negative text indent over ABC pixels, is considered spam and either isn't registered, or even worse, effects your site negatively.</code>Hiding the contents of an H1 tag, such that the search engine is presented with textual content which is not visible to a visitor, is SEO Spamming, and can get the site banned if one of your client's competitors catches you doing it and turns you in! It is, in fact, a form of hidden text spamming (itself "Black Hat", and explicitly banned by all of the major search engines). With the offense made all the worse by the fact you are doing it with an H1 tag, rather than non-emphasized text (Due to both the power of an H1, and the real estate it would take-up if rendered on-screen) Google makes it pretty clear that hidden text spamming is prohibited. In fact, they have a web page in their anti-spam guidelines devoted to it! They also have a check-off box (the first one, in fact!) on their spam report page specifically dedicated to reporting this kind of spamming (see 3rd link - requires login). The fact that Google may not explicitly list every means of hiding keywords does not therefore make a particular spamming technique legit. Indeed, as Google states in their Webmaster guidelines (see 1st link) - "It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it." However, in this case, this method of hiding content is specifically prohibited. On their Hidden Text Spamming page (2nd link), Google lists examples of various tricks to hide content, including specifically - "Using CSS to hide text" Which is what you are proposing to do here. While implementing this with external CSS files MAY make this a bit harder for Google to detect via automated means, it is also a VERY easy technique for someone to spot. All it takes is for just ONE of your client's competitors (OR their SEO's) to wonder why the site is coming-up higher in the SERPs than they are, notice what you are doing, and turn you in to Google for spamming! Any short-term gain you may obtain from such a technique is not worth the risk of getting your client's site banned from Google. The original quote from the WebmasterWorld discussion referenced by the Search Engine Roundtable link Shaq Ali provided makes the following excellent point - "For those who may be hiding things through CSS or negatively positioning content off screen to manipulate page content, I surely wouldn't do that with any long term projects. ;) The penalty for getting busted using this technique I would imagine is a PERMANENT BAN.* No if's, and's, or but's, you're history. You'll need a pardon from the Governor to be reconsidered for inclusion. ;)" (* - Bold replaced with caps) #### Links: * [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fsupport%2Fwebmasters%2Fbin%2Fanswer%2Epy%3Fhl%3Den%26answer%3D35769&urlhash=woHy "New window will open") * [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fsupport%2Fwebmasters%2Fbin%2Fanswer%2Epy%3Fanswer%3D66353&urlhash=e5Vy "New window will open") * [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport](http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fspamreport&urlhash=UReX "New window will open") I hope that your query had been solved.
-
If he put the image within the h1, and set the alt text to what he wanted the H1 would that help? It wouldn't be ideal but it could be a workaround that would yield some results.
I agree the design should encompass the proper tags, especially the H1 and H2.
-
Hiding text through CSS is against Google's TOS. So basically it can be classified as "black hat".
Your H1 should tell your users what your page is about, if you have to hide it for whatever reason, there may be something wrong with your design.
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
-
Category text not present in mobile version
Hey guys! I am looking into a site that has multiple category pages. These have descriptions that include relevant KWs. However, the text appears only on the desktop version, not on mobile. If I inspect the page, I still see the text's html tags. The site has been indexed by the smartphone google bot. Is there a chance the text's KWs are being detected by Google? I would think adding the text is the ideal route, but I´d like to see what you think. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Reprise0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Is “Bad IP Neighborhood” Theory still relevant?
Hi, I want to hear if there are any who believe that "Bad IP Neighborhood" Theory is still relevant? Find more information here: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/does-google-safebrowsing-prove-bad-ip-neighborhood-theory/10702/ Best regards, Jonathan
Technical SEO | | JoLinda911 -
Logo / H1 page structure
Not sure why I did it this way, but I need to know if this is bad for SEO - I suspect it is. Consider this is how the Logo and company name is shown on each page of our site. # UpCounsel, Inc Where the #title tag has a background image showing our company logo, rather than the actual company words. Then the CSS is also displacing the company text in favor of the logo, but also helps with accessbility so the first thing they see on the site is the company name. My question is - I should probably not use an H1 tag for this, right? And then in order to change this around, I should use H1's for the important title of the page. I understand there is some question about whether the page <title>and H1 should be the same, but we don't need to go there right now. ;-)</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Mase0 -
One H1 tag Dead Long Live multiple H1 tags?
Good afternoon from 9 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK, Ive been holding on to the mantra of one h1 tag per page but a developer has challenged me on this by stating you can have multiple h1 tags on the condition the page is HTML 5 & each h1 tag is within its own section or article tag. So the question is do i need to change my tune? Thanks in advance, David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
H1 Tag.
As far as I know to rank well H1 tag should be present in all pages and it should be one of the first things in the page, it also should include the keywords. I was checking my site and magento generates the H1 with an image, www.theprinterdepo.com I dont know if this is wise? class="logo">The Printer Depo<a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.theprinterdepo.com/" title="The Printer Depo" class="logo">width="377px" src="https://www.theprinterdepo.com/skin/frontend/default/MAG060062/images/logo.gif" alt="The Printer Depo" />
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
How do you find bad links to your site?
My website has around 900 incoming links and I have a Google 50 penalty that is sitewide. I have been doing research and from what I can see is that the 50 penalty is usually associated with scetchy links. The penalty started last year. I had about 40 related domains to my main site and each had a simple one page site with a link to the main site. (I know I screwed up) I cleaned up all of those links by removing them. The single page site still exist, but they have no links and several of them still rank very well. I also had an outside SEO person that bought a few links. I came clean with Google and told them everything. I gave them all of my sites and that the SEO person had bought links. I gave them full disclosure and removed everything. I have one site that I can't get the link removed from. I have contacted them numerous times to remove the link and I get no response. I am curious if anyone has had a simular experience and how they corrected the situation. Another issue is that my site is "thin" because its an ecommerce affiliate site and full of affiliate links. I work in the costume market. I'm also afraid that I have other bad links pointing to my site. Dooes anyone know of a tool to identify bad links that Google may be penalizing me for at this time. Here is Google's latest denial of my reconsideration request. Dear site owner or webmaster of XXXXXXXXX.com. We received a request from a site owner to reconsider XXXXXXXX.com for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We've reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines. In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from XXXXXXXXXX.com may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines. If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en and resubmit your site for reconsideration. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
Inbound anchor text?
I have 5 keywords that I would like to target. I have created & optimised 5 pages on my website for these words. (1 keyword optimised per page) Should I inbound keyword anchor text to my specific pages or hit the home page with the anchor text?
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0