JS Replace text heading with image - is this OK with Google?

[erk01]

I want to use a font, other than the standard web fonts (Arial, Tahoma, etc), for page headings, etc. We could do this with Flash or a static image file. However, to search engines, the page title is one of the important factors of a page's content and a flash or image file will essentially hide this content from crawlers.

What if I create the page using <h1>, <h2>, <etc...> tags and then have the text inside these tags get replaced with an image using javascript? The image would contain exactly the same text, but use a custom font.

Hopefully Google would see the crawlable text and the end user, with Javascript, would see the image.

Is this a no no?

[edited by: tedster at 5:57 pm (utc) on May 2, 2007]
[edit reason] formatting issue fixed [/edit]

[tedster]

In my experience, you can use any of several "image replacement" techniques, such as "Fahner Image Replacement" and usually do fine as long -- as long as your image and your alternate text are exactly the same so your site passes a manual inspection. One of my favorites is a Flash technique called sIFR, which has been uses by several major news websites.

Image replacement has long been a standard for giving accessibility to aural screen readers.

[erk01]

Thanks for the reply. Playing with the sIFR approach right now.