So we have a client that we are now doing on page optimization for. We're working with his developer to include <h1> headers on the category and product pages. Problem being, they don't hide their stylesheets from the bots via robots.txt file. My solution was to just create a separate css file for those pages, store it in a directory called /styles/, add a robots.txt file that disallows the bots from hitting it and we can then decorate the <h1> and <h2> text the way we want. Problem being, he wants to just include like this <h1 class="mftr_header">. The class he wants to include is in their former stylesheet that is definately not hidden from the bots. My question is, "IS IT STILL NECESSARY TO HIDE FROM THE BOTS THAT YOU'RE RE-FORMATTING THE LOOK AND FEEL OF <H1> TEXT?" I've seen others recently debating this, yet I've always been under the assumption that if they see that you're changing the look of <h1> text via css, then they won't weigh that text as <h1> anymore.
I have actually never actually done a straight up test on this. I do not beleive it is necessary, but I have no empirical proof of this...often I make many changes at once....
I have never heard that simply changing the apperance of h1's make any difference at all unless you're making them invisible or something. I could be wrong but this would be news to me.
And I believe you guys would be right as I got a bunch of replies in other forums indicating that this is only necessary if you're spamming and want to hide it from the se's or if you like running around naked with nothing but a black hat on. I'm wrong and now that I think about it, it would be stupid if that was the case. I believe that around a year ago, I had an seo employee that told me we needed to do this, but I'm now assuming he did it for shady reasons (ie for hiding text or what not). Since I don't do that, I'm guessing I'm good to go.
It is shady. Manipulating H1 formatting (specially size and display:inline, not so much colors) is tricking the SE into believing your text wrapped around the header is important, while showing a different thing for the users. If the SE finds out that you're changing the header, you might even be penalized.
Don't hide your CSS from spiders. It might make them think you are using hidden text or something. There is nothing wrong in changing the style of your h1 tags as long as they are still readable.
I don't recommend hiding your CSS from spiders either. Hidden text is becoming a popular way for spiders to downPR someone.
Styling your tags is perfectly acceptable but just because an <h1> or <b> tag is styled doesn’t mean you can do anything crazy like enclose paragraphs or content in the tags. Use the tags exactly link you would normally. Styling is simply something you can do to improve the user experience.
I do not believe you need to 'hide' your stylesheet from a spider. a) that's cloaking, it's bad b) I've seen *no* evidence that spiders parse an external stylesheet anyway. If anyone can disprove this, I'd love to see it.
I have a question for everyone, Does google even use the CSS information in their indexing? Google is looking for "text" not cosmetics. Outside of "Blackhat" tactics, what information does a CSS file give google? This might get google upset but it should create a HTML Validation error first and that google will see.
I am afraid he is trying to implement the text-indent:-10000px formula to hide the h1 and not be visible for human eyes. Thats a blackhat/spamming technique which you would not want to do for your client. Unless you want him knocking on your door with a shotgun next to him because he was banned.
It was never necessary to begin with. Especially if you use the H1 heading as it was originally intended. To mark up the title of the Web page (not the Web site, but the Web page). And since the H1 element (when used correctly) only needs to be used once, there is no need to apply a class to it (if it's going to be separate from the other pages in the site, I'd apply an ID to that page's BODY element and style it that way instead). It won't. Search engines care about text content, not how it's presented (so long as the text is not being deliberately hidden from the user to game the search engines; note that image subsitution techniques such as the Gilder/Levin approach and CSS based dropdown menus like the Sons of Suckerfish dropdown menu are perfectly OK since the text is perfectly visible to people with images and/or CSS disabled respectively. Think about this for a second. What are you hiding, and why are you doing it? Are you merely masking the presence so you can lay a presentational background image over the H1 due to browsers not implementing custom fonts? If so, don't worry about it, since the search engines will still pick up the text (if anything, the use might flag your site for human review, which will then be exonorated when the person conducting the review sees you're not trying to manipulate anybody). Or are you trying to stuff as many keywords in the element as possible, then hiding that element from the visitors while hoping the search engines pick it up? If that's the case, then you need to stop that right now. It's just not worth it and will only get you in trouble. (That, and being honest means you'll have to do less work in the future.) Nothing could be further from the truth, actually. All the CSS is doing in this case altering how the element is presented to the user (since search engines don't parse scripts or styles). All the search engine spider will see is the heading. I'm not so sure about hiding the stylesheet folder from the search engines will have any negative effects (since for one I haven't done it myself and second, I'm not about to try it on a live Web site), but I can tell you that there's really no reason to since the stylesheet doesn't contain text content in the first place. In other words, don't worry about it. As I said earlier, it depends on why the text is being hidden that will get the site penalized (and PR has nothing to do with hiding text - PR is about the ratio of links coming and going from each of your Web pages). If hiding text via image subsitution or dropdown menu links was really THAT bad of an idea, then nobody would be using them due to the penalties the search engines would inflict. Given that many of the world's most popular Web sites use these perfectly legitimate techniques (and properly I might add) there's no reason to fear being penalized by the search engines for using them in the first place. H1 is a level one heading. And yes, they DO carry more weight than plain text. How much more nobody knows (since we don't know the exact algorithm) but I can tell you it's significantly more than other elements (which is why people abuse the HTML semantics in their pathetic and vain quests to get the top positions in the search engine rankings). Exactly. And keep the text in the headings short as well. Not only will the keyword density be stronger but the user will be able to better ascertain what is coming in the content as well (which is why the density is higher for short headings in the first place). Cloaking is hiding content from a user without replacing it with something acceptable (such as with image substitution techniques like Gilder/Levin) for the sole purpose of spamming the search engines. Hiding a stylesheet to prevent a search engine spider from sucking down bandwidth and wasting its time while it crawls your site has nothing to do with that. Huh? Sorry, I don't exactly understand everything you're trying to say here, but I will try to answer this the best I can. With regard to the first statement, I cannot say for certain since I don't work for the Big G (that's Google), but my guess would be no since it's the content they're after. If they were to take the stylesheet into consideration, my guess would be that it would be just to make sure that nothing stupid or shady is being done with it. It's not a blackhat/spamming technique actually. Not in and of itsefl anyway. It is inaccessible to people without images enabled/supported (while still getting the stylesheet parsed) however and should be avoided on those grounds anyway. The only time it would be considered to be spammy is if the text didn't match what was supposed to be in the image (for example, replacing the DigitalPoint logo with "Buy my crap! I have this, this, this, and that for sale! Low low prices every day!" instead of just "DigitalPoint").