H1 Header Tag and SEO

styled verses unstyled

[mthomas]

I was wondering, for SEO purposes - is a simple header tag with the code of <h1>Blue Cats</h1> going to have more weight/importance than a styled <h1> tag like below, that is slightly smaller, uses a different color, etc?

<h1 STYLE="font-family: Verdana;font-size : 12pt;text-align : middle; color :#FFFFFF; width : 75%">Blue Cats</h1>

Or will the SE's look at either one and weigh them exactly the same?

The only reason I'm wondering is because for the size of my page layout, a regular h1 tag is just too large.

[tedster]

Styles are expected and standard practice, not some kind of trick. However, why not put the CSS in an external file instead of inline.

[mthomas]

Hi Ted, thanks. So I guess it doesn't matter either way.

I'm actually using a wysiwyg editor for this site. What I can't do in it, I'm creating code objects for certain parts.

I've never really worked much with css. :-)

[reddevil]

I have the following in my code which somebody had proposed instead of <h1> tags.

<td valign="middle">
<p align="left">
<span class=header2>Heading Goes Here</span></td>

Will this affect my SERPS as I will not have h1 tags but the titles will still be larger and bolder than the rest of the text. Are the spiders clever enough to work this out?

[tedster]

When a search engine values <h1> text as a signal of relevance, it's the <h1> element itself they look for.

In recent times because of abuse, some search engines decided they could not value <h1>, <h2> tags any more than regular text -- the abuse just clouded the picture. But at various times and at some engines they still may used in various ways. Where they are given more clout than regular text, it is the <h1> element itself that the SEs look for.

I don't know of any algo that would read css, grab relative font sizes and factor that into its scoring. With the h tags, it's not the size or style, it's the semantic information that is of value. It's not impossible, but I don't see external css files being spidered frequently enough for that to be true.

[g1smd]

Run your page through [validator.w3.org...] making sure that you tick the box for "Show Outline" first.

On the results screen, scroll down to the section marked "Outline". There you will find a bullet point list built from all of the heading tags in your document.

If that outline does not look like a summary of your document then you are abusing that tag.