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
-
Why Product pages are throwing Missing field "image" and Missing field "price" in Wordpress Woocommerce
I have a wordpress wocommerce website where I have uploaded 100s of products but it's giving me error in GSC under merchant listing tab. When I tested it show missing field image and missing field price. I have done everything according to https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product#merchant-listing-experiences and applied fixed i.e. images are 800x800 and price range is also there. What else can be done here?!merchant listing.jpg
Technical SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
Images on Website for SEO
Good Morning, We have a magento website with hundreds of different products that have slight size variations. The image for each of these products looks the same (the only difference between the products is some of the dimensions) .... Would you recommend using the same image for each of these products and just use a generic file name that describes the overall product or would you give each product its own image with it's specific product name as the file name? Should I use 1 image for 500 different sku's or should i rename the file the name of each individual sku and load an individual image? The end user will not know the difference since all of the images will appear identical, simply asking from an SEO perspective. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Image Duplication
I'm feeling strong! Ok, so can Google penalise a website which has "duplicated images" - coming from a completely independent website?
Technical SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Can hosting blog posts with keyword anchor text on outbound links cause a penalty?
My site received a Google penalty for having inbound links from blog posts with over-optimized ("spammy") anchor text. I spent months getting these links removed. Yesterday - I received a link deletion request from a site that my site had linked out to (three links via keyword anchor text relevant to their company) in a blog post. The "unnatural link" penalty still hasn't been removed from my site. My question is: Does the penalty work both ways? For having inbound "unnatural" links ... AND for having outbound "unnatural" links?
Technical SEO | | RedNovaLabs910 -
Replacing a site map
We are in the process of changing our folder/url structure. Currently we have about 5 sitemaps submitted to Google. How is it best to deal with these site maps in terms of either (a) replacing the old URLs with the new ones in the site map and (b) what affect should we have if we removed the site map submission from the Google Webmaster Tools console. Basically we have in the region of 20,000 urls to redirect to the new format, and to update in the site map.
Technical SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
Header Tags
Ok so I am writing different pages and the first heading is an H3 just because I wanted to it be a certain size. Then as you see the content, I have an H1 tag. Example page: http://www.oxfordmshomes.net/condos/acadia-court-Oxford-MS you can see that "Acadia First" is the first thing you see on the page and it uses an H3 element. Long story short, my hierarchy is wrong. Does this have any negative effect on my SEO efforts?
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
Anchor Text the best way to use it
Hi i am wanting to gain links to my site and make the links relevant and have seen many sites that do not have the keyword on their site and have been told as well as having the keywords in the image that they will also have anchor text from other sites. Can anyone please tell me the important of anchor text and how i should use it. Is it wise to build anchort text links within your own site and what other sites should you be looking for. I have used a few article sites to gain anchor text links but most of these are no follow which does not help me. any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to attach at text to image that other websites use from my website
I often have other websites link to my website. They will do this with an image that they pull off of my website. (actually my website continues to serve the image). These inbound links are great, but they don't have alt text. Is there a way for me to attach alt text to the images, or is this something the other website needs to code themselves?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0