Image replacement

Hello,
if I have:

<div>
 <h1>Company</h1>
</div>

HTML:

and this in styles:

div {
 background-image: url('foo.gif');
 height: 200px;
}

h1 {
 display: none;
}

Code (markup):

Has this image replacement any SEO value?

btw. foo.gif is a logo of a company.

 

I think google would see it as an attempt to hide text; which they frown upon. I've seen in another forum where googleguy specifically mentioned display: none; in why a particular site lost rankings.

It involved a huge paragraph, but still, I'd not do that unless it has some practical value to the site (such as hiding/expanding navigation or similar things).

 

I'm compelled to use a special image instead a plain text. So, I wanted to know how can I save some SEO at least

 

Their are ways to get around it. The problem is that people will leave their CSS file in the main folder. If you want to be sneaky, you could put your main css file in the images folder and then use your robots.txt file and exclude the bots from crawling the folder.

Then, no search engine would be able to access your css file and see what you're doing with the display:none

But...I wouldn't.

 

Dangerous solution

I'll just sneeze at hiding anything