H1 image replacement question

[c2g]

Working with content folks on a new section of our website. Developed a new logo for this section of the site, and they want to incorporate the style of it into all of the page headings. The only way to pull this off is to use images for H1's. (Without getting into unnecessary detail, they have to be images - too precise to try text over background images.)

I made everyone aware of the importance of H1 text for SEO purposes, but they really want these images.

When I first attempted SEO back in 2003, I recall doing a site using CSS image replacement along these lines:

Widget Page

#example {
    background: url(../images/example.gif) no-repeat;
    text-indent: -5000px;
     }

That was nearly 10 years ago, and they definitely ranked for the H1s at the time which led me to believe it worked.

Anyone know if this is considered an acceptable practice today? I read some other threads about enclosing the image in

tags and relying on the ALT text, but that doesn't seem to be a good option.

[jgower]

Why do they have to be H1?

Anyway...Matt Cutts says no CSS hiding!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLvn_WkDJ4

[c2g]

This post is deleted!

[jgower]

I get it, just not sure that it's 'ok' to do...anytime you're hiding something, it cant be good right?  Anyway, I'd do something like:

 <code>#  <img< span="">src="whatever.jpg"  alt="whatever"  /></img<></code> 

That should work right?  At least, I think it's your best bet.  I will say that I do have competitors that do what you are wanting to do and some are higher than me in rankings, so...your call, but I wouldn't.

[c2g]

Yeah, seems like either of these options would work. Yours seems like the safe route.

For my method, it's easy to see how someone could use it just to stuff the actual H1 with keywords that have nothing to do with the image and then move them off-screen. My content people's argument was that if we do it and our text in the image matches exactly what we're pushing off-screen, then we should have nothing to worry about.

My only fear would be that some algorithm sees a margin-left set to some large negative number and assumes it's black hat.

[jgower]

Yeah, and we have no idea what's at play.  I mean, if we look around the net and see who is abusing with CSS hiding and who isn't my guess is that 95% of people abuse it...and if I'm Google I'm going to go ahead and put it an automatic point deduction somehow based on how many of those I see, then hope that people who manually rate these sites 'undo' the auto deduction.  At least, that's what would make the most sense.

I wouldn't risk it, but that's just me.  I'm sure the alt tag in the h1 would do just fine and doesn't 'hide' anything...Although...you could certainly abuse that as well since it's mostly hidden, lol.  Just use a flippin google fonts or a cufon font replacement and make it as close to what you want as possible.  The less images the better!  My competitor could easily make their h1 image into text and it would probably look even better than the image they use.