SEO and Text Indent

suarve

suarve

suarve

Soldato
Joined
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Posts
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Location
Midlands, UK
Hi,

Have been having a read around about this and no one can make their mind up if it's good or bad. What are your opinions on using text-index -9999px for heading tags.

Ta
 
Well I have a design whereby the page heading are images, written in a very non standard fint - using a web safe font would bugger up the overall look/feel of the design.
 
suarve said:
Well I have a design whereby the page heading are images, written in a very non standard fint - using a web safe font would bugger up the overall look/feel of the design.
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Have you tried using Cufon? You can generate font files with only the characters you need and then use Javascript to render the font. Anyone with JS disabled or search engines still see the header with a standard font you can specify. Used it on a few sites and found it pretty good.
 
I can't see how it would be a problem; a <h1> with an extra span in it [for the uber-indent] is still a h1.

Google only looks at the markup, and the markup will [should!] still be valid and semantically appropriate.

I've been using this image-replacement-and-indent method for years* and not noticed anything detrimental SEO-wise.

* I know other display font replacement techniques are available - sIFR, Cufon etc - but none give the typography control [ligatures, kerning] that an image does :(
 
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can't you have a alt text or title property for the image to still have the seo effects of the h1 tag? afaik google do look at the styling and see how it's shown to the user and they do it very well. i was watching a video made by head of google search where by he showed some javascript which as something like x=sdijenfsifnsiuneirn, and then a piece of code to take letters at specific point to make the styling of a paragraph to no show and google can easily detect this.

with that said, wordpress use the text-indent -9999px trick so i'd have thought in this case it's allowed? why though i can't understand as it opens up a huge opporunity for keyword spammers
 
Mammalian said:
can't you have a alt text or title property for the image to still have the seo effects of the h1 tag? [...]
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I think there might be a little misunderstanding happening here - an <img> isn't used; the image showing the fancy display font is a background image in standard CSS fashion. The text indent is used so that the HTML text doesn't overlay the text embedded in the background image.
Code: 
<h1><span></span>Steve Albini's in collusion with Virgin Trains again</h1>

That sort of thing.

EDIT: Also, I must have had a brain-fart regarding Google only looking at markup; they obviously can and do look at CSS! They're typically secretive about how they use this, though.
 
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simisker said:
I think there might be a little misunderstanding happening here - an <img> isn't used; the image showing the fancy display font is a background image in standard CSS fashion. The text indent is used so that the HTML text doesn't overlay the text embedded in the background image.
Code: 
<h1><span></span>Steve Albini's in collusion with Virgin Trains again</h1>
That sort of thing.

EDIT: Also, I must have had a brain-fart regarding Google only looking at markup; they obviously can and do look at CSS! They're typically secretive about how they use this, though.
Click to expand...


ah i see. why not switch to using an image then rather then as a background as it isn't being used correctly and then you'd be left with no seo problem?
 
True, but neither an image's alt nor title are as semantically appropriate for a heading as a <hn>.

Headings establish document flow and compartmentalisation; alts/titles don't.
 
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Thanks for replies. Aftera bit more reading, think I'll leave the images and add a subtle (but visible) h1 to each page.

While I'm on the topic of SEO, what's your opinion of this - personally seems a little black hat to me.

Have been looking through a few competitor sites where I work and there seems to be a bit of trend lately.

You'll have your main website with a page about Web Design, with the onbvious keywords web design in the title and h1 tags. Then in the footer you have links as follows (links go to a renamed page E.g. web_design_location1.html):

Web Design Location1 | Web Design Location2 | Web Design Location3

Each of these links goes to to the same main web design page but with the h1 and title tags adjusted (E.g. Web Design Location1) - basically the same page as the main page describing yoir web services.

The weird thing is, is that the companies in question ranks quite well for terms likeWeb Design Location1.

Again, I won't be doing this for our company site as it seems fairly underhand, but whar are your opinions on it?





EDIT:
Have just come across another competitor's site. They have a list of about 250 (at the very least) uk regions/areas all linking to the name page, with a different querystring E.g.

Kent Web Design (links to: web_design.php?area=kent)
Essex Web Design (links to: web_design.php?area=essex)
Devon Web Design (links to: web_design.php?area=devon)

These pages are not mentioned anywhere on the site aprt from the site map, where this huge list of place names resides.
 
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suarve said:
While I'm on the topic of SEO, what's your opinion of this - personally seems a little black hat to me.
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i don't like it but as you say it seems to work

examples all made by BT
http://www.cleanersregister.com/Guildford minus mine, green clean, and key services.

i don't understand what it is that makes those sites so much better from just putting that text there. they all pretty much rank somewhere on the first page for most keyword searches in my areas,
 
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Mammalian said:
i don't like it but as you say it seems to work

examples all made by BT
http://www.cleanersregister.com/Guildford minus mine, green clean, and key services.

i don't understand what it is that makes those sites so much better from just putting that text there. they all pretty much rank somewhere on the first page for most keyword searches in my areas,
Click to expand...

Well that's kind of a directory style site, so it's to be expected there imo.

The example I used is a competitor web company with hindreds of location name + keywords in their sitemap. E.g.

Web Design Surrey
Web Design Essex etc etc.
 
It's certainly possible, but I don't see the point - it would needlessly add to the markup. Plus, anyone viewing unstyled markup would see double headings, as it would display image AND heading text.

The background-image-and-indent is a more elegant solution, which is why it's widely adopted.
 
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