Header Logo and H1

[evansluke]

I would like to use the website logo on our site as the H1 for the homepage (see top 'Covers' logo http://www.covers.com/index.aspx ). I have found one of our sister sites with code like this

Gracenote

with CSS that sets the text to 'transparent' and the background image to the logo.

My question is would the text be consumed or ignored by the robot? Unfortunately, wedging an H1 in anywhere else is not possible at this time, so this is my best option. Is this change worthwhile?

THanks in advance.

[DSM_UK]

Hi Glen,

If the text is getting set to transparent in CSS then it will indeed be picked up by Google, as Google ignores CSS styles.

You can always check what Google is actually seeing by going to the cache of the page and clicking the 'text only version' link.

Kind Regards

Jimmy

[ChadC]

Anything that has transparent text I would avoid because I think it looks spammy to Google. (they might not notice it now but someday they will catch it so its a bad long term strategy) If you want to set your logo as your H1 for the site I would just suggest loading an image with alt text, but I would question if it would be worth.

Really, I would work towards putting a unique text H1 on every page of your site. Every page on your website should have a unique purpose and therefor should have a unique Heading. If you think about it like a newspaper who wants to read a newspaper where every story has the exact same title?  I would suggest working toward this rather than trying to short cut with putting your logo as the H1.

One last tip: Remember each page should only have one H1. I have seen lots of sites that put there logo in the H1 and then go back with text H1s later on, but they forget to remove the H1 from the logo.

Hope this helps.

[evansluke]

Good stuff, and good tip about the cached test only version. I hadn't heard that one before, and it looks like I might use it plenty. Thanks!