Question about H1 and H2 etc..

[Tomseys]

Can one define the size of a h1 (or h2,3,4, etc) in basic html like this:

<h1 align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="7" color="#800080">Title</font></h1>

Is this ok?

I want to be able to control the size of the font in simple html but not hurt how google will credit this tag.

Is it better to not define the size of the font and let the h1 be h1 and h2 be h2 seo-wise?

I don't do css so please keep to what I am asking.

Thanks!

[shasan]

I don't think google will have a problem with that, but others feel free to correct me. The 'stock' H1 tag is just way too ugly for Google to seriously think we would use it often and freely.

Oh, btw, why don't you use CSS? ;)

[Tomseys]

I do well without it. I've notice though in the past using the h1 h2 h2 tages and defining them seem to hurt my rank versus when I just defined them without using h1, h2 tags.

Just want to make sure this is legal.

Maybe I'll try some sites h1'ed without size definition and note rank affection.

Thanks for your help!

[pageoneresults]

<h1 align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="7" color="#800080">Title</font></h1>. Is this ok?

Sure it is okay. But why be just okay when you can have perfection?

One very important issue to consider here is your text to html ratio [searchengineworld.com]. The W3C implemented CSS for a reason. Their hopes are that we as web developers will move into a more semantic environment where presentation markup is moved to CSS and semantic markup goes in its place.

Let's take your one line of code above and disect it a bit...

<h1 align="center"><font face="Verdana" size="7" color="#800080">Title</font></h1>

There are 82 characters in the above and that includes spaces. We can effectively trim that to 14 characters with spaces by removing all of the presentation markup...

<h1>Title</h1>

In the external CSS file, we now have this to replace the on page presentation markup...

h1 {
font-size: 18px;
color: #800080;
background: none;
text-align: center;
}

The above CSS is 72 characters with spaces. Once your external CSS file is accessed, it typically goes into the users cache. This means that once that file is loaded, browsing from page to page becomes much quicker as all of your presentation markup is stored on the users system in the external CSS file.

Now, think about how much code bloat we are removing from the page by moving all style to an external file. You've also just increased your text to html ratio dramatically. You may have started with a page that had a 10% T2H ratio. After the makeover, you now have a 35% T2H ratio. This is very good for page visibility.

The align and font declarations are deprecated in favor of CSS.

[Tomseys]

Hi. Thank you very much for your post.

Is what you are talking about related to speed of loading of page? I think part of what you are saying is this.

Are you also or totally saying that the actual html code is also read by the spider and is counted as total words in the keyword/total word ratio? I didnt know that. I thought htm were just indicators (or affectors of content) and not actual "content". As far as speed goes, my pages load within 2 seconds at any modem speed. So im with you there.

Thanks for any further clarifications.

[shasan]

pageone,
that's what I would have recommended, had tomseyes wanted to explore CSS. I don't see why you wouldn't want to use CSS. Personally, with the size of my site (it's not even that big, and most of it is dynamic/template driven), I couldn't dream of not using CSS.

At any rate, good luck.

shasan.

[Tomseys]

Just reread your post and I see better what you are saying.

My main concern is that the defining of font size of the different h tags (h1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc) doesnt hurt my rank compared to not defining them and just letting them be h1, h2, h3.

CSS seems interesting and an easy system.

But I just want to be clear on the path I am describing, that definition of size font doesnt confuse google and hurt the tag. Say you have a h3 tag and define it as size 6 and have an h1 defined size 5. I'm hoping the h tag and its number strength overrides the effect of defined size is all.

[shasan]

it won't confuse google. Anything between the h1 tags will be considered as in the headline. For example, the headline could include a link, or italics such as this:

<h1><center>This is a <a href="example.com">Catchy</a> <i>Headline</i></center></h1>

And that shouldn't affect Google's consideration, so I don't see why font tags would be any different.

Incidentally, you would have to do that even if you were using CSS.

[Tomseys]

Ok, just wanted to be sure with regards to font size="" that there was no possible negative conflict with the h tags.

Thanks guys!

[Tomseys]

One last question.

Can CSS benefit SEO?

[shasan]

I don't think so. I don't use it for SEO. I'd rather change the size of my H1 tag in one place instead of every page that I've used it. CSS allows me to do that, and I don't have to clutter up my code.

[Tomseys]

I hear you. I'm just a very fast copy and paster and I like slightly different definitions for each page - ones that may change from day to day so I just do it directly.

I guess css makes sense but its not really totally relevant to my core qustion, which was whether there was a possible conflict with size definition of h tags in simple html.

Conflict meaning say a size="5" definition of h2 and h3 tags might create some sort of disharmonay and cause rank loss or stuntage because an h2 should be bigger than h3.

[shasan]

fair nuff :)