Using CSS to format heading tags

Do SE's realise?

[nickc001]

Hi,

I am wanting to use the <h1> tag at the top of my pages to put the pages targeted keyphrase inside the heading tag.

However I don't want an ugly h1 tag at the top of my pages so I am using CSS to format the heading using font-size: 11pt; font-face: arial, helvetica; etc...

My question is do the Search engines take the CSS formatting into account? Because I have effectively reduced the impact of the heading on the page will the SE's give the heading less weight?

thanks,

Nick

[agerhart]

You should use external CSS.....this will also reduce the size of your code.

[martinibuster]

This topic seems to get covered once a month. Also make sure that the H1 is being used as it's intended, and not randomly seeded througout the body, etc.

[nickc001]

But does the Search Engine know the size of the heading is reduced and does it give less weight in the page ranking calculation because of this?

[agerhart]

Since you mentioned PageRank, I am going to assume that you would mainly like to know the effect this is going to have on Google, and not so much the other engines. The search engine robots, Google and others, will not be able to tell that you have reduced the size of the heading with your CSS.

[tedster]

No, there's no problems here as long as you're using H tags as intended in your page's body.

An H tag can get extra attention in an algorithm because it's part of the LOGICAL structure of the page: it's a heading, supposedly a little capsule summary of whatever follows. The default size that browsers throw at H tags is not the issue...and the specific font size never was a standard anyway.

CSS is intended to separate the display from the document's logical structure. So you're not cheating, you're doing what the W3C wants you to do.

[Robert Charlton]

>>...does it give less weight in the page ranking calculation because of this?<<

>>Since you mentioned PageRank...<<

Not necessarily the same thing. The use of headings should have nothing to do with PageRank at all.

As for page ranking... Google does look at heading tags. They're probably aware that some people use these to trick the engine. Reducing the font size could possibly be interpreted as trying to trick the engine, but I've seen heading size controlled by CSS even on the Microsoft site.

What is important, I feel, is... as Marcia once put it... whether what you're doing would survive after human inspection. With regard to headings, this means... is it really a heading?

Should the engines decide to check CSS, you're probably better off using external CSS files than putting the CSS formatting on the page.