Do images work as a H1
-
Is a h1 tag wrapped image with a optimized alt tag as effective as text wrapped in a h1 tag?
-
I agree 100% with what Theo is saying. The use of CSS to replace images has gotten to a point (from a purely aesthetic standpoint) that you cant tell the difference anymore. It is effective and considered best practice to use text when possible. It compounds your pages SEO weight and can edge out your competition if they are using images as opposed to CSS to render text in its place. Style Sheets RULE!
-
UX: if the image is missing for some reason, the Alt Text will be formatted as H1 and have to fit inside the image area. Not a pretty picture at all.
-
Really interesting that you ask this as I have just recently been researching on this exact same thing. A website where we had 4 H1 tags on homepage (not a good thing!) needed to change - to keep it to just 1. I did not want to introduce new keyword phrase and I struggled to find an existing keyword/title phrase that I could wrap the H1 with. For a sometime I was considering making the logo as H1 as the logo images ALT had the websites main keywords in it but from research and non-scientific test on a dummy site, I found that its not very affective at all.
To some extent, the effect is like an image backlink - Google does not greatly value the ALT of the image that is linking to you, as it would, had the backlink been from a text link with anchor text.
-
Most crawlers that I've used has not recognised the H1 tag wrapped in Alt text used on one of our sites. Once we have used the normal H1 tag we have seen a good increase in one of the keywords we have tried to rank for a while.
-
The functional purpose of H1 tags is to identify sections of text so CSS formatting can easily be applied such as text size, bold, font, etc. Those text modifiers don't apply to images.
I checked and enclosing an image within a H1 tag is actually valid HTML as per the W3C standards.
I doubt this idea has ever been tested to see if the alt tag was given any increased importance because it was contained in a H1 tag. I would not believe it would as the entire point is bold or enlarged text increases visibility, whereas ALT text is not visible to most readers.
This is an instance where you are making a change that does not benefit users in an effort to manipulate search rankings. I wouldn't suggest it as helpful.
-
No. Actual text is slightly more effective than an image alt text. You might want to have a look at CSS image replacement techniques?
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
-
Multiple H1s and Header Tags in Hero/Banner Images
I work on education websites, and our sites are being flagged by SEO and accessibility checkers for having multiple H1s. The home pages have the site name as an h3 in the hero image, and an aspirational headline (think: Be Like Mike) as an H1. The sub-pages have two H1s: one on the site name in the banner image, and the other on the page title. Note that the site name is very keyword-rich. If we were to remove the H1 and H3 tags from the hero/banner images, would it do any SEO harm? At the same time, we’d rewrite the H1 on the home page to be more keyword-focused. Any other options? I also read that it’s OK to have multiple H1s as long as it’s clear which H1 belongs to the heading area and which one belongs to the body area of the page. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0 -
How to have H1 keywords on EVERY Page but not destroy user experience for holiday rental site
Hi all, as a Newbie getting my holiday home rental site up & running, I just cannot find a clear answer to this after many hours research. Moz & everyone else advises I need to optimise by ensuring my keywords are in my H1s, that H1s need to be on every page, more than 20 characters, but still unique, relevant, a statement of the content, appealing to users & not keyword stuffed. How can I include my keywords ("holiday home tasmania" & "tasmania holiday rentals") in the heading on EVERY page & still make every heading unique, relevant & not keyword stuffed? I only have 10 pages Home / The Space / Amenities / Location / About / Guide / House Rules / Reviews / Contact & they by nature need to be information based, not designed like a more creative Blog (which I will add later). Eg - my Amenities page which is a quick reference list so people can easily see inclusions & find if we have features they need/want. It seems really awkward & not in keeping with the chic, designer image I am trying to project to have "Amenities At Your Holiday Home Tasmania", "Three Beaches Tasmania Holiday Rental Location", "About This Beach Holiday Home Tasmania", "Your Guide To The Best Of Your Holiday Accommodation's Local Area", House Rules Of Your Chic Holiday Home Tasmania", "It's Easy To Contact Your Next Tasmania Holiday Rental" Much of the information out there including Moz's seems to be oriented towards blogs where there is a lot more creative freedom for an expressive H1, rather than a service business in a competitive space where people need to access facts & features quickly in order to make a buying decision & are very quickly going to notice & be irritated by the use of similar sounding phrases in every headline AND sprinkled throughout the page content. Many thanks, Cherie - Australia
On-Page Optimization | | Luminatrix1 -
Star snippet not work
Hi I write a json+ld script for star snippet in my website but not work in my first page. you can see it in this URL https://www.alibaba.ir when I googled my keyword "بلیط هواپیما" my competitor show with star snippet in SERP but my site doesn't show.
On-Page Optimization | | tohidpolymer4 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Would this hack work? - human-readability-optimized headline -> keyword-optmized headline
Hi Moz-ians, I need your insight. I am thinking of the following hack: 1. Writing the headline of a blogpost as human-readable & catchy as possible and publish on content voting communities like Hacker News. (basically serving human readers the best) 2. After the influx of large traffic, change the title based on the target keywords of the blogpost. (basically serving Google Search Engine the best) I would like to know whether making such a change after publishing a post would nullify any positive impact I will earn by publishing the post in terms of the search ranking of the page? (=whether it would be a sound strategy.) I am worried a sudden change in the headline (e.g., or element) would damage the increase in page authority I've gotten through the incoming traffic from, say, Hacker News, which makes this hack not worthwhile to explore.
On-Page Optimization | | Plivo0 -
Nowadays is it fundamental renaming images for SEO?
Its it fundamental nowadays renaming images for SEO? Many photos are on top positions without being renamed like: mykeyword.jpg but can be 9876986.jpg instead. Doesn't itcount much more the contest in which they are such as text around photos, descriptions and context from internal and external linking pages? Renaming everyphoto, in every gallery can be considered over optimization? Is there any study showing the impact the single factor of renaming a photo in a page? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | holidaysempire0 -
H1 tags in WordPress - could someone clarify this please?
Hey there. I am building a site and am confused by the whole H1 tag thing in WordPress, perhaps someone could clarify please? When I generate a new page or post I of course enter the page or 'post title' which generates following HTML code class="title">Used Containers So I was thinking, ok great now I have a H1 tag! Great...But no, according to the Yoast plugin (which uses a company called Linkdex for it's on page analysis) I don't have my keyword 'Used Containers' in any of my headings. I then experimented by adding another H1 heading of 'Used Containers' in my WordPress page copy area and saw that it shows up written in my page source as Used Containers (so without the class="title"> bit in my first H1). Could anyone be kind enough to explain: The difference between the two and any known impact on SEO. What is the proper way of optimizing H1 tags in WordPress? Thanks so much!
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
20 x '400' errors in site but URLs work fine in browser...
Hi, I have a new client set-up in SEOmoz and the crawl completed this morning... I am picking up 20 x '400' errors, but the pages listed in the crawl report load fine... any ideas? example - http://www.morethansport.co.uk/products?sortDirection=descending&sortField=Title&category=women-sports clothing
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0