# hidden by the header?
-
Can someone please clarify whether hiding
tags behind the image header is an accepted best practice or is frowned upon by Google?
I was doing some competitive analysis and noticed some websites were doing it, but it certainly wasn't egregious.
-
From what i have read Google wants their crawler and end users to see the same content and have the same experience. Based on that, if you have a header image that says "Great Deals" and you want search engines to read that, simply place that content in your ALT tag (SEOMoz has even posted studies showing that the ALT tag holds more relevance than the
in regards to keyword placement).
So my question to you is why would you need the
to be their in the first place?
-
I've read varying things regarding the juice of the image alt text, and would have to believe that the h1 headers carry more influence overall.
I am specifically talking about the
tags being off page or behind the header image, and understand this to be against the best practices.
-
This is my opinion as well, but due to some of the minimal designs out there, it would be difficult to fit an appropriate
without disrupting the design.
-
quick point of clarification - i wasnt suggesting hiding the text, just utilizing alt tags..
-
Hiding text is definitely frowned upon to say the least. The experience should be the same for the user as it is the search engine. I wouldn't recommend doing it simply because your competitors are... even if it may be frustrating. It will catch up with them.
-
I've done it on some websites and I havent on others.. It really depends on the design elements we've been incorporating. I think if you can have the text there without a complete design overhaul that would be considered best practices, but I havent been penalized by google when I have done it with img tag. I do believe that google doesnt pass as much juice through the alt tag though, so you'll have to be clever with your CSS.
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
-
Multiple H1s and Header Tags in Hero/Banner Images
I work on education websites, and our sites are being flagged by SEO and accessibility checkers for having multiple H1s. The home pages have the site name as an h3 in the hero image, and an aspirational headline (think: Be Like Mike) as an H1. The sub-pages have two H1s: one on the site name in the banner image, and the other on the page title. Note that the site name is very keyword-rich. If we were to remove the H1 and H3 tags from the hero/banner images, would it do any SEO harm? At the same time, we’d rewrite the H1 on the home page to be more keyword-focused. Any other options? I also read that it’s OK to have multiple H1s as long as it’s clear which H1 belongs to the heading area and which one belongs to the body area of the page. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0 -
H1 & H2 headers - When is too close
Hi, I have two similar headers on my site's homepage: H2: Inventory management made easy H1: Kitchen inventory management made easy Target keyword for the page: (kitchen inventory management) My question is are they too similar and would this be effecting my rankings? Should I change the H2 header to something totally different? Thank you Moz Peoples
On-Page Optimization | | vertigoventures0 -
Harms of hidden categories on SEO
On our website we have some invisible/hidden categories on our site. Can anyone advise whether these are harmful in terms of SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Is this hidden content?
Hi all, I was wondering if the homepage of www.dirtylooks.com has hidden content in a search engines eyes. There is some text which appears underneath a tile called "hair tools" that has to be scrolled in order to be viewed by a visitor. As this isn't the typical white on white or off page by CSS hidden content are we in danger of being penalised?
On-Page Optimization | | BenfromBNKR0 -
Deleting hidden H6 headers
Dear Moz members, In our webshop we have hidden H6 headers for example: http://www.rijwielcashencarry.nl/bovag-fietsreparatie and then the diagnoses chrome://seoquake/content/modules/diagnosis/diagnosis.html?id=1. How can we delete the h6 headers because i dont see them in the editor. It looks like they are somewhere in the source code. But where? Greeting, A SEO Noob 😞
On-Page Optimization | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Header Links vs. In Page Links
We have lost considerable rank for some of our top search terms (department names) and the rank loss correlates to a change we made on our homepage. That change was to remove a secondary navigation to the major departments in the content of our homepage. Now all we have is the global header navigation on the homepage (and all other pages on the site). I have read that in-page links pass more value than sitewide header links and I'm wondering if this is really true. These were text links (not linked images) and our header also contains text links (and some javascript). We did not make any other changes on our site at this time and this was not around the time of any major algorithm updates. The site is www.ebags.com.
On-Page Optimization | | SharieBags1 -
Links in header tags
Hello Seomozzers I have a query, is it good to have links in h2, h3, h4 tags. Does it have a positive factor over on page optimisation or a negative factor. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
HTTP Headers
I ran an independant SEO test that recommended I do the following: Missing Header: Cache-Control header missing, should be presentMissing Header: Content-Length header missing, should be presentMissing Header: Content-Encoding - why don't you try using gzip or deflate?Missing Header: Expires header missing, should be presentMissing Header: Last-Modified header missing, should be presentIs any of this necessary?
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0