[HTML] Header 1 (<h1>)...display:none

Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2005
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5,361
From an SEO point-of-view, you should have the <h1> tag in there for the title at the very top of the body.

Basically, I can't remember, is it "ok" to have the styling as "Display:none" for the <h1> tag if you don't want to show it to the user....it doesn't do anything bad for SEO does it?

I only ask as I used to do that? But then I changed to "text-index:-2000px" styling for some reason, but I was wondering peoples opinions...

...or am I looking at the situation too deeply...and it doesn't really matter?

Thanks.
 
From an SEO point of view it doesn't matter, since crawlers ignore CSS.

Well google tells me different (from searching - not actual google)...

...according to what is posted on peoples blogs anyways...

...I was just looking for the general consensus.
 
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Well google tells me different (from searching - not actual google)...

...according to what is posted on peoples blogs anyways...

...I was just looking for the general consensus.

Hmm, seems you're right! You learn something new every day :p

The stuff I found seemed to imply that it's only a problem if you're using it to conceal keyword-saturated text or something similar; if you're just concealing it for accessibility purposes (e.g. while retaining an image that has the same text) then it's no problem.
 
Well I am using it to simply utilise the <h1> tags but without the image showing and insuring that its the first thing in the page...

...from a pure SEO point-of-view.

I mean I could have the <h1> tag in one of the containing DIVS, but then it wouldn't be the first thing in the body, and I was always taught that, that was the way to do it.

See my implementation in my very draft site here: http://www.benbarron.com/new/ (the actual XHTML isn't even final for whats currently on the page - I know there are things that should be changed)
 
There's to many other factors playing an effect on your position. I really wouldn't worry about it.

A lot of sites now that are using a lot of DHTML/JavaScript are hiding DIV's etc. And from personal experience, it's not something I would worry about.
 
It doesn't have to be first in the page either. So long as it's before any sub headings then there's no problems. Search engine crawlers are rather intelligent these days. You'll find most sites have the nav first with some sort of skip links.
 
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