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
-
How to replace a custom platform's homepage with another homepage from another platform domain?
I have a question regarding 301 permanent redirection. I currently have three websites, each hosted by different platform/CMS: one by Wix, another by WordPress, and a custom built CMS. I want to have all my three websites to be under the the custom build CMS's URL. What I am most concerned about is that I would like to have the home page of my Wix website to become my custom build CMS's new home page and the original content currently under my custom build CMS would be updated under new sub directories (in which I have access to the custom build CMS's source code). I have never done a 301 redirect before and I would like to know if there is any additional thing I need to do to my current custom build CMS besides assigning all my current content under my custom build CMS to new directories before executing 301 redirects?
Technical SEO | | sihanedutech0 -
Can ALT tags for a Gallery be identical for all images with just the no changes?
Can ALT tags for a Gallery be identical for all images with just the no changes? Will that create any issues?
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers1 -
Change E-commerce Plataform... redirect urls... and images?
we are changing the e-commerce store and usually we do the redirection of all pages URLs... We usually don´t redirect css, js and images files .... Shouldn´t we redirect images as well?
Technical SEO | | SeoMartin10 -
Is alt text inside an img tag inside an h1 the same weight as text directly inside the h1?
Right now I use a background image and CSS to tie the h1 tag to my logo on each page. However, I am concerned that may not be best practice. Plus, I am interested in using schema markup on my logo. So, my question is, if I use an image with alt text inside my h1 tag, will the alt text carry as much weight as a text-based h1?
Technical SEO | | Avalara0 -
Logo in header - picture or text
I was wondering for the logo from header: from SEO perspective, does it help if it is text formatted with css (if keywords from company title would metter) or just a logo picture with title? Would you guys recommend any? the website I'm talking about is http://azsedans.webperfection.biz/ thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | DavidIRC0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
How can I have pages with media that changes and avoid duplicate content when the text stays the same?
I want to have a page that describes a specific property and/or product. The top part of the page has media options such as video and photos while the bottom includes the description. I know I can set up the media in tabs and have it separated by javascript, but everything resides on one page so there are no duplicate content issues. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside BUT what if I need to the photos and the videos to have separate URLs so I can link to them individually? For example, for a real estate site blog, I may want to send visitors to the page of the home tour. I don't want to link them to the version of the page with the photos because I want them to arrive on the video portion. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside?video=1 Is there any way to get around the problem that would result from the duplicate content of the product/property description? I do not have the resources in the budget to make two unique descriptions for every page.
Technical SEO | | WebsightDesign0 -
Sitemap with links and images together
Hi there, my e-commerce platform (Magento with "Mageworx SEO Enterprise" plugin) is generating an sitemap.xml that mix text (links) and images, and the result is something like that: <url><loc>http://www.e-lustre.com.br/abajur/abajur-keops</loc>
Technical SEO | | e-Lustre
<lastmod>2011-04-10</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
image:imageimage:lochttp://www.e-lustre.com.br/catalog/product/image/size/250x250/e/-/e- lustre_mantra_0030_grande.jpg</image:loc></image:image></url> WebmasterTools accepts it, but recognize it as an image sitemap. Have you seen that kind of sitemap, and most important, do you think that's a problem ? Full file: http://www.e-lustre.com.br/sitemap.xml0