An H1 question

formatting with css

[mattglet]

just making sure i can do this:

so it's a general concensus that H1 tags are very good when it comes to search engines. is it ok if i use css and modify what the h1 looks like?

h1 {font: 22px Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; color: #009900; font-weight: bold}

i think i've heard that people try to modify their h1 tags for some scamming purpose... not exactly sure what it is. in your opinion, is my declaration above valid for search engines? or do you think it could be considered sketchy? Thanks.

-Matt

[Shadows Papa]

I wonder if you are referring to making the text not visible and loading it with "key words" to "scam" the search engines?
Have you ever done a search for something only to have the first page of results filled 20 times with the same site - which has NOTHing at all to do with what you were looking for? In some cases you can track down their code - the load it with popular key words in the H tags, then use CSS to modify text color so you can't see it. The key words are in the HTML so the search robots hit on them, but you can't see them. I've read some documents put out by the search experts that state some will look for the text color code in the HTML and if it's set so you can't see it, they can be penalized - however, bury that in CSS, and they don't see the text being set to the same color as the background to hide it.
Makes one want to take out their server............
I once spent over 2 hours doing a search and in every search I did, literally, every link that came up went to the same pages. I was fit to be tied. It was a waste of my time, but someone made some money on the clicks.

Shadow's Papa

[MatthewHSE]

The purpose of headings is to look like a heading, thus giving some structure to the document. I can't see the search engines penalizing a site for downsizing <h1> tags to better fit their layout. Maybe SE's will eventually start reading CSS - who knows? - but even if they do, my guess is they won't penalize for small headings, at least if the headings are sufficiently larger than the main text.

Just my opinion; I'm certainly no expert.