After 1 year of doing half arsed SEO, I'm on page 1 actually the 3rd spot on google and around the same on Yahoo and Live. So, now that the ugly H1 text header got me there, I've changed to a graphic title. Any thoughts? Am I seeded well?
not a good idea. as ugly as it seems, H1 tag is important and if you had it before and now you removed it, you can expect a ranking drop over time. i would suggest you to put it back thre as search engine bots can't read the words on the image. you can use alt attribute and use the keyword for the image file, but still H1 tag is too important
Remember you are going against alot of people in your niche if you slack off on your seo their is a good chance you will fall sad enough and you hit it the one biggest thing about how google knows where to place your page is the h1 in your first line or title.
Don't replace your <h1> text with an image link inside the <h1>. It will only hurt you... NOT help you. If you want to put a graphic in your header that links to the home page that is fine. But do NOT replace your <h1> text with an image link wrapped in an <h1> tag. Terrible idea.
if you use image link then use the ALT and TITLE tags to describe what the image is about, theoretically, the search engine looks at descriptive text surrounding the image to decide whether the image is worth pursuing to be get indexed or not. Since you cant control the search engine, thats the level you need to work with.
H1 tags are important. If you must have a graphic there, make it a background image in your CSS which is positioned in the same spot and use <span> to place an invisible H1 tag in the actual content with the header text in the H1 tag. This allows you to have an H1 tag behind the image and is also good for people who browse with styles or images disabled as they will still see the header in place of the image.
Alt text for an image link pointing to URL X (<a href="URLx"><img src="imgURL" alt="alt text" /></a>) does NOT carry near the weight of the link text of a normal text link pointing to URL X (<a href="URLx">link text</a>). Using links inside of an <h1> regardless of whether it's an image link or a text link is a TERRIBLE idea. The link text for a text link or alt text for an image link should tell the search engines what the page you are linking TO is about. The <h1> should tell the search engines what the page your are ON is about. They tell the search engines two different things... Combining the two on a single page is a terrible idea...