# hidden by the header?

[dignan99]

Can someone please clarify whether hiding

tags behind the image header is an accepted best practice or is frowned upon by Google?

I was doing some competitive analysis and noticed some websites were doing it, but it certainly wasn't egregious.

[kchandler]

From what i have read Google wants their crawler and end users to see the same content and have the same experience. Based on that, if you have a header image that says "Great Deals" and you want search engines to read that, simply place that content in your ALT tag (SEOMoz has even posted studies showing that the ALT tag holds more relevance than the

in regards to keyword placement).

So my question to you is why would you need the

to be their in the first place?

[dignan99]

I've read varying things regarding the juice of the image alt text, and would have to believe that the h1 headers carry more influence overall.

I am specifically talking about the

tags being off page or behind the header image, and understand this to be against the best practices.

[dignan99]

This is my opinion as well, but due to some of the minimal designs out there, it would be difficult to fit an appropriate

without disrupting the design.

[malachiii]

quick point of clarification - i wasnt suggesting hiding the text, just utilizing alt tags..

[Bevelwise]

Hiding text is definitely frowned upon to say the least. The experience should be the same for the user as it is the search engine. I wouldn't recommend doing it simply because your competitors are... even if it may be frustrating. It will catch up with them.

[malachiii]

I've done it on some websites and I havent on others.. It really depends on the design elements we've been incorporating.  I think if you can have the text there without a complete design overhaul that would be considered best practices, but I havent been penalized by google when I have done it with img tag.  I do believe that google doesnt pass as much juice through the alt tag though, so you'll have to be clever with your CSS.