Img before or after h1 tag?

[jotham2]

I like images to align right at top of content page.  img tag before h1 tag looks better on page, but wondering if h1 tag before img tag is preferred by spider.  Irrelevant? or possibly matters?   thanks for any thoughts.

All about Stuff

or

All about Stuff

or even

All about Stuff

[Develop41]

The second option would  work best. The contents of the H1 and other heading tags, matter a lot when optimizing a page for specific keywords. The tag should not contain images and should appear before anything else on the page.

[heatherrobinson]

I would be interested to see whether anyone has done any experiments or had any experience of this effecting search engine positions.

I would say that as long as the H1 appears near the top of the page before any

oretc, so that the markup is correctly formatted as the W3C guidelines state, then it shouldn't really matter. But I could be wrong.

[Thos003]

I think that's a great idea Heather. When can we expect that report?

[Thos003]

I really don't think it will make that much of a difference. I think the real tipping point in image optimization, other than content of the webpage, is the title and alt tags.  So your example should be

But if I had to guess... The images relevancy is probably most closely associated with the surrounding text. So I would error on the side of putting it after the H1.

[andresgmontero]

I agree with Thomas, there is not much of a difference here, and if we look a little further into the future, in the HTML5 structured data every section can have an H1 tag.

So I would advice to put the image where ever looks best for the user, add that alt tag and keep the image put of the H1 for sure.

[jotham2]

yeah it's a tiny point but I'd be interested in results of any test too.   I think if h1 is one of the very first things on page, don't add anything like an image above it.   however I have so many lines of scripts and divs and lists with mouseovers that what's one more line of code.... since I like the slightly higher position of the image when place img before h1.     Focusing on content creation, and just want to set a guideline for myself on a detail like this and move on.  Thanks much!

[Thos003]

Bots can burn through script... I don't think an extra line is  really a speed bump.

.. but yes... always fun to test things.