Hidden H1 Tag on Image
-
Hi,
In the page I'm working on, I encountered an
tag in an image, rather than in a text form.
Do you think it's an issue when it comes to SEO?
What do you suggest I should do if there is an issue?Keen to hear from you!
-
Short answer; I think you can get more value from an H1 tag, so its a small SEO issue.
However, it really depends what image you're talking about. Is this just a logo? If so it doesn't adequately describe page content in a way that people or search engines can understand. Regardless, putting that image in an H1 tag does nothing for the image.
H tags should display a hierarchy. As James mentions above, H1 tags should contain an editorial description of the page; a headline, this is best for usability (which trickles down to SEO impact).
Anecdotally I've found keywords in H1 tags to have greater sway over page relevance than keywords in body copy. They are certainly one of the areas I pay more attention to. Despite that, it's not unusual to find logos in H1 tags, especially on homepages. But I'd encourage you to consider putting that H1 tag around a keyword optimised mission statement/heading on your homepage instead. The logo can remain visually as prominent. Ranking for your companies name is rarely hard so why have the code focus on that?
What about standards? Well interstingly w3c uses img in an H1 tag. With an alt tag of "w3c". That will be machine readable, but not very helpful as a page heading. Then again w3c goes on to use h1 tag for its page titles as well thus committing the sin of multiple H1 tags. Only thing of relevance they say is that you can include HTML in an H1 tag, so one option is an image and text.
In summary;
- one H1 tag per page
- the right place in the hierarchy (with h2 etc)
- keyword optimised but not spammy/stuffy (for deeper pages consider long tail kewords)
- Short, descriptive and engaging text*
*for example mission statements should say who the website represents, what they do and why they're special. Ideally in less than 20 words; think snappy newspaper headline. Answer user intent!
-
It's an issue in that it's not correct.
A "header tag" is always text based. They are used to determine, to search engines, what a page is about. The search engines can't really "see" images in the traditional sense so this application is incorrect.
A lot of designers mistakenly wrap the logo in a H1 tag and call it a day. I call it out in audits all the time. It's just not correct or the best practice. It will have no effect for SEO or for image optimization in that format.
Your goal is always to communicate to users (and Google) what the page is about. The proper application of H1 tags is part of that process.
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
-
Identify hidden content + Question of impact
I have a client that had a web agency which systematically implemented hidden content. Is there a tool that will compare source content vs what is readable on from the browser? Otherwise, can you recommend articles that focus on doing this? What are the impact on hidden content these days? Another client had hidden content on the first page and when we took over them they were ranking nr 2 with the home page on their brand name (nr 1 with a sub page). We have checked the link profile with Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz and nothing spammy comes up so I doubt it is Penguin related.
Technical SEO | | OscarSE0 -
No H1 tag in wordpress, what are the implications?
When checking my blog posts I noticed that they don't contain any H1 tags. This confused me as I'd heard that wordpress automatically puts H1 tags on your blog post titles. Is this something that might negatively affect my rankings? If an H1 tag is absent, does the H2 tag take center stage so to speak? Is this something my wordpress theme does and how can I fix it? Cheers! Anton
Technical SEO | | antonshakr0 -
How to fix duplicate content caused by tags?
I use SEMRush, and the issue they are finding is I have 30 duplicate content issues. All seem to be caused by the tags I add in my portfolio pieces. I have looked at my SEO settings (taxonomies, etc) in the Wordpress site, and don't know what I am doing wrong....any advice how to fix? I have attached a screen shot VsYv2wY
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
All images are noindex will opening this at once be an issue?
Hi, All images are noindex will opening this at once be an issue? Not sure how a few months ago all my images were set as noindex which i realized last week. We have 20K images which were indexed fine but now when i check Site:sitename it shows 10 or 12 and the inspect element via Chrome i see the noindex is set for all images. We have been renaming the images and adding ALT tags for most of them and would it be an issue if we change the noindex in one shot or should we do them few at a time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Help with duplicate title tags.
Hi Just going through Seomoz crawl diagnostics for one of my clients sites & see that the title tags for over 2,000 pages are the same due to the way there site software generates the titles using php, examples : **home page** = <title>Home - Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discounttitle> other page = <title>A0 Frames - Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discounttitle> So as you can see the page titles have the page name given to the beginning of the title which is fine as they have the keyword, then the text : Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discount Now if i take out the text : Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discount the home page is going to have just the word Home which is rubbish & the other pages will have the keyword which is better but not great, just wondered if any one has a better solution?.
Technical SEO | | askshopper0 -
Image map crawlability
Hey Mozzer's, I'm reviewing a moving site which utilizes an image map for their service areas. As I'm new to image mapping how should I diagnose them for crawlability, effectiveness, code (which appears correct using HTML & alt text tag), what should I be looking for, etc? I'm trying to determine the effectiveness of the image map links compared to including some regular lateral links on the page. Page: http://bit.ly/KOOtgN Thanks in advance for all advice and insights.
Technical SEO | | Bragg0 -
Tags and Duplicate Content
Just wondering - for a lot of our sites we use tags as a way of re-grouping articles / news / blogs so all of the info on say 'government grants' can be found on one page. These /tag pages often come up with duplicate content errors, is it a big issue, how can we minimnise that?
Technical SEO | | salemtas0 -
Title Tag Wordpress
I need to know how can I personalize the title tag individually in my categories?
Technical SEO | | nafera20