Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Using a non-visible H1

    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.

    Using a non-visible H1

    Technical SEO
    8
    10
    9306
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • elytical
      elytical Subscriber last edited by

      I have a developer that wants to use style="text-indent:-9999px" to make the H1 non-visible to the user.  Being the conservative person I am, I've never tried this before and worry that Search Engines may think this is a form of cloaking.  Am I worrying about nothing?  And apologies if it's already been covered here.  I couldn't find it.  Thanks in advance!!!!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • LawrenceNeal
        LawrenceNeal last edited by

        From Whiteboard Friday - The Biggest SEO Mistakes SEOmoz Has Ever Made

        http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made

        "3. Recommending People Use H1 Tags with Keywords

        This mistake is a little bit more subtle. For years, SEOmoz recommended including keywords in the H1 of pages. After we started doing formal machine learning correlation tests we found out that this tactic didn't actually help very much at all (including the keywords in normal text in bigger fonts worked essentially the same). This was a shame because it meant we wasted time and energy convincing our clients to update their H1s."

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Andy_Morley_TWDG
          Andy_Morley_TWDG last edited by

          Using that CSS wouldn't Hide it from the spiders view, it will simply "move" the H1 off the screen.

          It is a pretty old "trick".

          Lets not forget Heading tags are useful to site visitors to so shouldn't necessarily be hidden to them.

          Users will use the headings whilst they Scan read your pages, if they can't quickly identify what the page content is about there is a danger they could simply bounce off... and you will lose them.

          As for Search engines penalising you for it, I'm not too sure, is there any research which anybody can point us towards? I dont think they are reading CSS attributes just yet right?

          Andy

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • danatanseo
            danatanseo @elytical last edited by

            You came to the right place for the validity you seek 🙂 I frequently vet things here in the forum and it has proven very helpful in convincing other members of my team to go one way or the other. Also, I completely agree with George's suggestion to use the "alt" attribute if it is indeed an image we are talking about, but it appears we are really talking about a bonafide

            tag for text with keywords in it.

            That being the case. Stick to your guns and insist on it being visible. If you really feel that it disrupts the design...it would be better to leave it out than to make it invisible.

            Good luck!

            Dana

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • elytical
              elytical Subscriber last edited by

              Thanks All!  So here's more detail.  The home page design was completed.  I still think H1 has some reasonable value and it didn't have one so I told him to put a keyword rich H1 in.  He felt it disrupted the existing design and executed it as above.  So....I thought I would seek "convergent validity" on the subject as a next step.

              danatanseo 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • donford
                donford @danatanseo last edited by

                I concur with Dana,

                Hiding your H1 tag will not necessarily cause a penalty. However, if you do so you are at risk for a penalty. If a particular savvy competitor comes along and notices you are obfuscating your H1 tags and reports it, then you may get dinged. I doubt that alone would cause a problem, but if that sort of tactic is par for the course for this web developer you may be in trouble.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • GeorgeAndrews
                  GeorgeAndrews last edited by

                  Read up on this Webmaster Tools guideline: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353

                  Note the following from the guideline if there is a very important reason for why your developer wants to use CSS to move the text off the page:

                  "However, not all hidden text is considered deceptive. For example, if your site includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript, images, or Flash files, using descriptive text for these items can improve the accessibility of your site."

                  If there is not a very important reason, and even if there is, suggest they populate the ALT attribute of the image with the text instead.

                  Hope this helps!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • BlueLinkERP
                    BlueLinkERP Subscriber last edited by

                    The general SEO community consensus is that you should:

                    A. be doing what is best for the user (so not concealing the H1 tag)

                    B. not doing anything that could make Matt Cutts and the Google team upset

                    They have advised against attempting to conceal content for SEO gain so I would strongly recommend avoiding it. They have been dealing with these issues now for a LONG time, so presumably their bots can easily pick up on those tricks.

                    The Google bots can now "see" what is visible on the page. They discount things that are not in the visible content area so the benefit to an offset H1 would likely be none. Also: They're watching you.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • danatanseo
                      danatanseo last edited by

                      Personally, I wouldn't do it. Does it work? Maybe. Or, maybe it works for a while and then Googlebot wises up and deindexes you. Is all the work you will have to go through for reconsideration going to justify hiding that tag? I'd say, definitely not.

                      It's just an

                      tag...leave it on the page and visible. Listen to your conservative gut and do what you know is the right thing. That's my two cents 🙂

                      donford 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                      • William.Lau
                        William.Lau last edited by

                        I have personally created an H1 tag in an image, I didn't see no negative effects. H1 tags are not as important but should be implemented, so even if it had any impact maybe it was minuscule.

                        H1 tags don't generally have to be visible like in my case, it was an H1 tag for the logo. I'm not sure where you are putting the H1 tag but if its an image I say why not, but if it is a regular text, why not just keep it as an H1 without hiding?

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Easigrass

                          Should I use a canonical URL for images uploaded to a blog post in Wordpress?

                          Hi, I have a wordpress website that has articles/news posts witch contain imagery. I've noticed that in the Media Library, when you upload an image to a blog post it generates a new permalink ...article-name/article-image-01.jpg I have Yoast SEO plugin and have the option to set a canonical URL for this image. Should I point it back to the actual article? Thanks for any helpers with this.

                          Technical SEO | | Easigrass
                          0
                        • PeaSoupDigital

                          Brand name as H1 on every page

                          Hi, Along with the title of each page, a Wordpress client has their brand name as a H1 on every single page. This is situated in the footer and just sits within the company info/address. Should these tags be removed, leaving just the page titles as H1s? Cheers, Lewis

                          Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital
                          0
                        • ChristianRubio

                          Title Tag vs. H1 / H2

                          OK, Title tag, no problem, it's the SEO juice, appears on SERP, etc.  Got it. But I'm reading up on H1 and getting conflicting bits of information ... Only use H1 once? H1 is crucial for SERP Use H1s for subheads Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance So say I've got a blog post with three sections ... do I use H1 three times (or does Google think you're playing them ...) Or do I create a "big" H1 subhead and then use H2s? Or just use all H2s because H1s are scary?  🙂 I frequently use subheads, it would seem weird to me to have one a font size bigger than another, but of course I can adjust that in settings ... Thoughts? Lisa

                          Technical SEO | | ChristianRubio
                          0
                        • Dan-Lawrence

                          Custom hreflang tags in WP & using with Yoast

                          Hi My clients dev has added custom fields for adding hreflang tags to head of pages such as: "Rel Type", "The URL", and "Language Code" Am i right in thinking that until a different language/country version of the site is created these can remain empty or should they still be populated once added say with some sort of global reference or best left blank since will leave the head content global by default ? Also how important is it to add charset to the language code ? since seems optional ? Also this set up is on WP multi-site with Yoast and devs asked me the below: _One thing to note is that Yoast generates its own "canonical" tags - so if _
                          _you are going to use hreflang tags and canonical tags then you don't need to _
                          _add a canonical using the custom fields I have set up - Yoast has that _
                          sorted. _But if you are going down the route of NOT having any canonical tags - and _
                          _using a x-defult for the hreflang tags, I will need to try and suppress the _
                          _Yoast canonical tag so you can do this. Much depends on your approach and _
                          what you think is best. So how do i know if using canonicals or x-default, i take it best simplest to leverage Yoast and hence not add canonicals to custom fields ? Isnt x-default just for indicating language selectors/redirector not specific to 1 region? So long as havnt got those then good to proceed with Yoasts generated canonicals ? Cheers dan

                          Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                          0
                        • Theo-NL

                          302 redirect used, submit old sitemap?

                          The website of a partner of mine was recently migrated to a new platform. Even though the content on the pages mostly stayed the same, both the HTML source (divs, meta data, headers, etc.) and URLs (removed index.php, removed capitalization, etc) changed heavily. Unfortunately, the URLs of ALL forum posts (150K+) were redirected using a 302 redirect, which was only recently discovered and swiftly changed to a 301 after the discovery. Several other important content pages (150+) weren't redirected at all at first, but most now have a 301 redirect as well. The 302 redirects and 404 content pages had been live for over 2 weeks at that point, and judging by the consistent day/day drop in organic traffic, I'm guessing Google didn't like the way this migration went. My best guess would be that Google is currently treating all these content pages as 'new' (after all, the source code changed 50%+, most of the meta data changed, the URL changed, and a 302 redirect was used). On top of that, the large number of 404's they've encountered (40K+) probably also fueled their belief of a now non-worthy-of-traffic website. Given that some of these pages had been online for almost a decade, I would love Google to see that these pages are actually new versions of the old page, and therefore pass on any link juice & authority. I had the idea of submitting a sitemap containing the most important URLs of the old website (as harvested from the Top Visited Pages from Google Analytics, because no old sitemap was ever generated...), thereby re-pointing Google to all these old pages, but presenting them with a nice 301 redirect this time instead, hopefully causing them to regain their rankings. To your best knowledge, would that help the problems I've outlined above? Could it hurt? Any other tips are welcome as well.

                          Technical SEO | | Theo-NL
                          0
                        • ClaireH-184886

                          Does anyone use buzzfeed to creat links traffic and increase brand

                          Hi i would like to know if anyone uses http://www.buzzfeed.com to create links, gain traffic and increase brand awareness. I have signed up for an account but cannot get it to work and would like some help. I can get my content on there but cannot manage to get the links to work I signed up for this account a while back and a friend shown me how to use it but i have forgotten. here is my page http://www.buzzfeed.com/lifestylemagazine some links work and some links do not. what i am trying to do is to publish stories from my site as well as other sites and have the link included where you press the title and it goes to the site any help would be great

                          Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
                          0
                        • wcksmith

                          Use of Meta Tag - MSSmartTagsPreventParsing

                          We've inherited some sites from another developer that had the following tag: All references I can find to it are from 2004.  What is the purpose and is it worth including in pages/sites we build?

                          Technical SEO | | wcksmith
                          0
                        • lzhao

                          Should we use Google's crawl delay setting?

                          We’ve been noticing a huge uptick in Google’s spidering lately, and along with it a notable worsening of render times. Yesterday, for example, Google spidered our site at a rate of 30:1 (google spider vs. organic traffic.)   So in other words, for every organic page request, Google hits the site 30 times. Our render times have lengthened to an avg. of 2 seconds (and up to 2.5 seconds). Before this renewed interest Google has taken in us we were seeing closer to one second average render times, and often half of that. A year ago, the ratio of Spider to Organic was between 6:1 and 10:1. Is requesting a crawl-delay from Googlebot a viable option? Our goal would be only to reduce Googlebot traffic, and hopefully improve render times and organic traffic. Thanks, Trisha

                          Technical SEO | | lzhao
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.