Links within an H1 tag

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Links within an H1 tag

Is that proper?

Drew

8:32 pm on Nov 13, 2006 (gmt 0)

Say I have a site that currently has a link of:

<li><a href="xyz.html">xyzwidget</a></li>

Is it proper to optimize the tag as an H1 to look like:

<H1><a href="xyz.html">xyzwidget</a></H1>

I have seen posts such as:
[webmasterworld.com...]

But want to know if it is white hat to optimize a link using an H1 tag.

[edited by: Drew at 8:39 pm (utc) on Nov. 13, 2006]

webboy1

10:01 pm on Nov 13, 2006 (gmt 0)

I would think this is not the best thing to do - simply based on the fact that it's not what the H1 tag is intended for.

I don't know whether it would be classed as white or black hat, but the H1 tag is intended to be the main heading on a page i.e. it is a header for the content of the page.

If you use it to link to a page with similar information, then it shouldn't in theory be the header of the first page ... if that makes sense?

bellybuttonlint

1:22 am on Nov 15, 2006 (gmt 0)

a better way is : <a href="xyz.html"><h1>xyzwidget</h1></a>

crawlers specificially look for h1 tags

tedster

1:14 am on Nov 19, 2006 (gmt 0)

Sorry bellybuttonlint, that's not valid HTML -- even if many browsers will recover from the error. The anchor tag is an inline element, and it should not contain a block element such as a div, h1, p and so on.

...the H1 tag is intended to be the main heading on a page i.e. it is a header for the content of the page. If you use it to link to a page with similar information, then it shouldn't in theory be the header of the first page.

I'm completely on board with that thinking. It is still valid HTML to have this: <h1><a>text</a><h/1> -- but it's a bit confused from an Information Architecture and semantic point of view.