Image in H1

Makes sense if the image is the main caption, but waht does google say?

[killroy]

The logo of my site is the domain name written at a slight slant, and as such it is an image. But it being the name of the site and present in BIG leters at the top center of each page it would be the natural H1 element.

How does google deal with_
<h1><img src="www.SiteName.com.gif" alt="Site Name" /></h1>

does google see that as <h1>Site Name</h1>

What about if that logo is also the back link to root like:
<h1><a href="/"><img src="www.SiteName.com.gif" alt="Site Name" /></a></h1>

All that makes perfect sense for structural markup and the user experience, but does it suffer from SEO abuse and is downgraded by google relative to the text only version?

SN

[willybfriendly]

Not a direct answer to your question, but I found a better way to deal with the very issue you describe. The logo is a backgrond image with no repeat. The first text on the page is a styled <H1>. It displays inline as a slightly larger, bolded style in the first paragraph, and it is the name of the site. The site is in my profile.

WBF

[heini]

The header tag marks up text. The alt.txt in a gif can not be marked up.

This is simply wrong usage of this tag, and it has no effect on your rankings in search engines.

[killroy]

Hmm I see what you mean.

In my case it's a stylign issue as the design hasn'T got any space for raw text there, please take a look, the site's in my profile.

SN

[killroy]

Heini, I disagree that it is wrong usage.
I'm not marking up the alt text, I'm markign up the image which is the title. the alt tag simply compensates for the fact that spiders and certain browsers cannot read the text in the image.

Please view the site in my profile. All the image is is a particularly ornamented version of the title of the page.

would you expect to see <h1>Coca Cola</h1> at the top of the coca cola website, or the distinctive CocaCola logo? both canbe taken as the h1 title. remmber that according to the w3c specs there should be only on h1 title and therefore it is the titel of te whole page, which, in the case that the site name is the logo, is equal to the logo

SN

[Hester]

There's a way round this. Apply the image via CSS and put the text in a span. Use a div with an id first, such as "section".

#section h1 { 
background: transparent url(header.gif) no-repeat top left; 
margin-top: 15px; 
width: 150px; 
height: 75px; 
float: left;}

#section h1 span {
display:none}

The last bit makes sure the text isn't seen on screen. Now here's the HTML:

<div id="section">
<h1><span>My Page Title</span></h1>
</div>

Simple eh?

I can't claim credit for it though. Here is a page describing the effect in detail, along with its drawbacks:

[stopdesign.com ]

Have fun.

[killroy]

I've been considerign similar things to give google hints as to the intents of the page which users don't need, like including country names on a local site without spamming up the page with the country name everywhere. But won't google see the hidden span as hidden text attempt?

SN

[Longhaired Genius]

>The header tag marks up text. The alt.txt in a gif can not be marked up.

This is not really true. In Opera, if you turn off images, the alt text is "marked up" just fine. I think this is the case in Mozilla too, but I can't remember how to simply turn off images in Moz.

Hester - personally, I would NOT do this. For all sorts of reasons.

[willybfriendly]

Kilroy

I looked at the site. I still think my suggestion would work. You have plenty of space directly to the right of the graphic in question to put a one line blurb - "***** Pages for *****". Just style the H1 down to a workable size.

WBF

[martinibuster]

Image in H1: Incorrect.

Go to the W3C and this is what they say [w3.org]:

<h1> is the HTML tag for the first-level heading of a document.
The title is generally duplicated in an <h1> element towards the top of the page. Unlike the title, this element can include links, emphasis and other HTML phrase elements.

Please view my site

Please view the site in my profile.

That's not necessary for me, you've done a good job describing the issue, which you describe as a Styling problem.

The Underlying Problem: Design Issues
I take this to mean that you have a layout/design that won't accomodate a conventional h1. Style choices can sometimes get in the way of search engine friendly design, and the only way around this is to plan your design with both concerns at the forefront during the initial design process. One can make it unecessarily difficult for themself by designing the look first, then tacking on the search related elements afterwards.

But what does Google say?
Google is not only a search engine, it is also a web site. It has a webmaster guidelines page [google.com] that says this:

Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.

Although this speaks to your question indirectly, it directly states what Google wants, and if anyone cares about search engine traffic then it's wise to give Google what Google wants.

[Hester]

martinibuster: nothing about not using images in the W3C quote you give there. I got the idea from a site using it to deliver a template that others can alter and send back. If you read the link I gave you, it suggests there isn't a problem with images. (The only problem is the lack of ALT text.)

Search engines will see the text between the span, so Google is served.

It's only an idea, I haven't used it yet myself, but I thought it was worth suggesting.

[martinibuster]

nothing about not using images in the W3C quote you give there.

I can see your point, but if I can gently make a suggestion, that's not a valid or logical way to justify a statement: For example, there's nothing in there about using hidden text with h1 tags either...

In other words, it says what an H1 tag is, there are a million things that an H1 tag is not.
:)

[killroy]

If yo would quickly pop over to the site in my profile, you'd indeeed realise that there IS an issue, not simply that I haven't done my homework, and or given due consideration.

This site is NOT graphic design heavy, if you can call it designed at all. it is VERY utilitarian, and has been operating since 1999.

SN