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Replacing Header Tags with Images - SEO Bad Idea?

Does the hidden text still matter?

Poor_Knight

9:42 pm on Mar 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

Bad idea? CSS style header tags to use a fancy bg img and hide the text (display:none) but still using SEO'd header text?

Viewed as a black hat? Keyword stuffing? Or hidden text not matter?

Example:
h1 tag:" Keyword Services and Keyword Products".
But the CSS hides that text and in its place I have an image with graphics and stylized text that reads something like:
"Hey, check Out our Stuff"

canadafred

10:35 pm on Mar 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

probably won't get away with it

Poor_Knight

5:06 am on Mar 26, 2010 (gmt 0)

Yea, I'm starting to wonder if I goofed here. My intentions were well-meant but I can see how this could be abused and therefore probably not acceptable SEO. Anyone have any evidence or reference of this?

Poor_Knight

5:30 am on Mar 26, 2010 (gmt 0)

Well I should search first and ask questions later (I know) - I found a few good articles talking about this. CSS-Tricks has a decent round up of various techniques for this. The method I was going with was probably not good for SEO, but more importantly was not good accessibility. I am looking at a few methods that will fix this though - but none of them worked in all scenarios (variations of CSS on/off and images on/off).

undercoverseo

9:27 pm on Apr 15, 2010 (gmt 0)

It should be fine to use images instead of header text. You can use H1, H2, etc and still use images. For example, if you have an image called "Best SEO" and you previously used that as an H1 text. You can use that image and utilize the H1 as well. Google states that as long as the H1 text you are using behind the image is the same as what the content of the image is, it would be okay.

Here's a couple of supporting links:
[tutorialdog.com...]

[seomoz.org...]

Poor_Knight

9:43 pm on Apr 15, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the reply. I was using more "relaxed" verbiage like "What we do" in the image but wanted to use more SEO'd text like "Our Special Widget Services".

I opted for non-image H tags and used @font-face CSS. So I get a nice stylized H tag that degraded to a standard font for browsers/devices that do not support the CSS. Still looking for a downside to this option.

Obviously won;t do if you want actual images in the H Tags, but I just wanted a more stylized font.