Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Google Showing wrong image in the SERPS
Hi Guys, In organic SERPS Google pulling incorrect product image, instead of product image its showing image from relevant products, Checked the structured data, og:image everything is set to the product image, not sure why google showing images from relevant product sidebar, any help, please?
Technical SEO | | SpartMoz0 -
Not all images indexed in Google
Hi all, Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them. For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well. Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index. Any ideas on this issue? Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | flo_seo1 -
Images, CSS and Javascript on subdomain or external website
Hi guy's, I came across webshops that put images, CSS and Javascript on different websites or subdomains. Does this boost SEO results? On our Wordpress webshop all the sourcescodes are placed after our own domainname: www.ourdomainname.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.11.3'
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
www.ourdomainname.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/example.jpg Examples of other website: Website 1:
https://www.zalando.nl/heren-home/ Sourcecode:
https://secure-i3.ztat.net//camp/03/d5/1a0168ac81f2ffb010803d108221.jpg
https://secure-media.ztat.net/media/cms/adproduct/ad-product.min.css?_=1447764579000 Website 2:
https://www.bol.com/nl/index.html Sourcecode:
https://s.s-bol.com/nl/static/css/main/webselfservice.1358897755.css
//s.s-bol.com/nl/upload/images/logos/bol-logo-500500.jpg Website 3:
http://www.wehkamp.nl/ Sourcecode:
https://static.wehkamp.nl/assets/styles/themes/wehkamp.color.min.css?v=f47bf1
http://assets.wehkamp.com/i/wehkamp/350-450-layer-SDD-wk51-v3.jpg0 -
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 -
ALT attribute keyword on the same image but different pages
Hi there, As i'm sure you're probably aware, moz advises to use a keyword within the ALT attribute on pages... On a new website I am launching, I have the ability to add an alt keyword to image headers. On multiple pages we have the exact same image but with different keywords associated them inside the alt attribute. The image itself is a collage of different images and so the keywords used can, quite sneakily, match the image. My question is therefore, will using different keywords on the same image on different pages have a negative effect on SEO? Thanks, Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
Best Practice on 301 Redirect - Images
We have two sites that sell the same products. We have decided to retire one of the sites as we'd like to focus on one property. I know best practice is to redirect apples to apples, which in our case is easily done since the sites sold the same thing. www.SiteABC.com/ProductA can be redirected to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA. My question is how far does that thinking go regarding images? Each product has a main product page, of course, and then up to 6 images in some cases. Is it necessary to redirect www.SiteABC.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg? Or can they all be redirected to just the product page?
Technical SEO | | Natitude0 -
Div tags vs. Tables
Is there any reason NOT to code in tables (other than it being outdated) for SEO reasons?
Technical SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
How many strong tags is too many
Hi everyone, just a quick question, what are your views on the use of strong tags in content? how many is too many? What is you have strong tags around every keywords for a sentance etc?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards1