Hidden H1 Tags
-
I am trying to triple check this - I have a client who has all of their H1 tags as hidden. As far as I am concerned, anything hidden is not a good thing for SEO.
I am debating with their online store provider that this is not good practice. Everything I am reading says it is not good practice. They are saying it is for "My SEO experience would suggest otherwise. In addition, the H1 adds semantic value for users with disabilities to help give them context with what the content of the page is."
Did I miss something?
They are a large brand and have not been penalized. This has been happening for 8 months.
-
I have a related queston about "hidden" H1 tags.
I not iced on my company's website that there are multiple H1 tags which is a no-no, but the first tag, which must be part of our theme, is hidden by positioning it off the screen with the following css:
position: absolute;
left: -9999px;What are the SEO implications to using this css?
Thanks,
KP -
yes screen readers use them but why not incorporate them in the site with css? It will help their rankings!
Rather than trying to get them to remove them, argue the seo case for them to show them.
-
Yes, the way it's usually set up, screen readers for people with disabilities can still read the hidden H1s, so you won't have that card to play against them.
-
Thanks! Now my big issue is the whole "disabilities" issue. Have you heard that it helps with users with disabilities? Even if it is hidden?
Trying to figure this part out so I have a complete argument against it.
Thanks!
-
I have seen this done in order to help screen readers, but I definitely do not recommend this. They may argue that semantic rules of HTML 5 dictate that this is an okay practice, and it is for HTML 5, but not for Google.
Google doesn't adopt new rules or semantic changes right away. Changes have to take hold and become common practice. This isn't common enough, and hidden H1s do open you up for potential penalties.
-
they will get slapped at some point, if googlebot does not get them a disgruntled website owner that has a penalty will look at the top ten results, notice it and report them.
It is a direct violation of Google terms https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66353?hl=en
There is no problem in my opinion with using css to style your H1 tags so that they look nice on your site. But if you hide them you are just waiting for a penalty.
Also googlebot is much smarter than it was this time last year it is able to look at pages and see the content on the page rather than just looking at the code. this was part of the hummingbird release to target ad heavy sites above the fold but also looks for large logo's and content above the fold. All of this leads to the fact that Google knows what is visible and what is not and will rank you according to those factors. the H1 tags might be giving them no benefit at all right now without them realizing, When in fact they could be benefiting from them. how much business will they lose when they lose all their rankings for 3 weeks or maybe longer? Is it worth what they think they are gaining from it.
If they are really stubborn you could tell them to change a page or two and test it out. Do a fetch in WMT so the page is indexed quickly and see the results over the course of the week.
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
-
Meta tags for international domains
Hi Mozers I have 3 top level domains co.nz com.au and com each meta tag for the home page is unique for each country and I have tried to figure this out for the last 3 months, but unfortunately I can't seem to pin point why all 3 meta tags are showing up exactly the same. It seems all meta tags are showing up for the co.nz domain. In the attachments you can see all urls are showing up correctly for each country specific domain, however the meta tag description defaults to the NZ Any help around this would be much appreciated! Thanks all
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Is horizontal hashtag linking between 4 different information text pages with a canonical tag to the URL with no hashtag, a White Hat SEO practice?
Hey guys, I need help. hope it is a simple question : if I have horizontal 4 text pages which you move between through hashtag links, while staying on the same page in user experience, can I canonical tag the URL free of hashtags as the canonical page URL ? is this white hat acceptable practice? and will this help "Adding the Value", search queries, and therefore rank power to the canonical URL in this case? hoping for your answers. Best Regards, and thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Would reviews being served to a search engine user agent through a noscript tag (but not shown for other user types) be considered cloaking?
This one is tough, and I've asked it once here, http://www.quora.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO/Is-having-rich-snippets-placed-below-a-review-that-is-pulled-via-javascript-considered-bad-grey-hat-SEO, but I feel that the response was sided with the company. As an SEO or digital marketer, it seems that if we are pulling in our reviews via iframe for our users, but serving them through a nonscript tag when the user agent is a search engine, that this could be considered cloaking. I understand that the "intent" may be to show the same thing to the bots as the user sees, but if you look at the view source, you'll never see the reviews, because it would only be delivered to the search engine bot. What do you think?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eTundra0 -
Hits in H1 will improve ranking by regular crawling ?
Hello ! I was wondering if it's a good idea to keep the "Hits" in the H1 ? http://www.ibremarketing.com/item/netapp-e5400-storage-system.html Will Google come to check regularly the update (new information if I'm right) or if he will not like the idea to come back just for hits update. As I have very good results on this part of the website, I do not want to take any risk. Thanks a lot !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AymanH0 -
Crawleable but hidden
Quick question I manage the seo campaigns for the company I work for however i need some opinions on www.teamac.co.uk I have used jquery to control a on hover div which in returns feeds more information. woudl this be seen as a problem to Google, im not trying to hide things just want to keep the homepage tidy. any help would be appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TeamacPaints0 -
Geotag city different from postal address. Can I mention both cities together in title tags?
This boundary thing seems to be haunting me at the mo. Oh what I'd give for somewhere within a defined boundary! Anyway, just noticed a client has one city in its official postal address, and another city under its geotag. So I'm looking at the title tags and I'm thinking of mentioning both cities on the main entry pages (6 of them) then dividing mention in sub pages. Is this acceptable to Google? Might they see mention of both cities in homepage title tag (and other entry pages) as spammy. I don't want to upset Google!!! PS. Both cities are core markets. I would say they're of equal importance in terms of current business bookings and business potential.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Img alt tags and creating a small image in the background ? New Golf Clothing Company.
On a page I am trying to make it have a better on page analysis for a keyword. Is it worth creating a small image that you cant see in the background 5 pixels by 5 pixels with the keyword img alt, or does google see this negatively? I know they say to create good content for the reader / viewer but an image wouldnt be suitable as it is a category page within my ecommerce website. http://www.funktiongolf.co.uk/mens-golf-clothing-21-c.asp e.g Mens golf Clothing category
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | funktiongolf0 -
Hidden H1 tag - ?permissable
Until now I have been building websites either from scratch or with a template. Recently I decided to learn Adobe Dreamweaver. At the end of the first "Building a Website using Dreamweaver" lesson, the author notes the site is done but an H1 tag is missing. The instructor advises "The page doesn't have a top-level heading ( ). The design uses the banner image instead. This looks fine in a browser, but search engines and screen readers expect pages to be organized with a proper hierarchy of headings: at the top of the page, ..." The instructor then walks readers step-by-step into creating an H1 tag and using absolute positioning of -500px top to cause the tag to not be visible. My initial thought was the instructor was completely wrong for offering this advise, and users would be banned from search engines for following these instructions. I had planned to contact the writer and suggest the instructions be modified. Prior to doing such, I wanted to request a bit of feedback. The banner image's text in this example is "Check Magazine: Fashion and Lifestyle". The H1 tag that is created and positioned off-screen uses that exact same text. In an old blog comment, Matt Cutts shared "If you’re straight-out using CSS to hide text, don’t be surprised if that is called spam. I’m not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said “imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company’s name and it’s Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is ‘Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale …’ then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad.”" I would like to get some mozzer feedback on this topic. Do you view this technique as white hat? black hat? or grey hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RyanKent0