Friday, October 13, 2006

Q and A: Is it considered black hat SEO to hide H1 tags within CSS?

Dear Kalena...

If you make H1 tags hidden by using the CSS method, do search engines like Google and Yahoo consider this black hat SEO? I've heard that using the colour method is definitely considered bad SEO but that wouldn't be used along with the CSS method. It was suggested to use the CSS method for our H1 tags we're creating for clients but I wasn't sure if it was something that would be safe to implement as part of our SEO set up for clients.

Demi

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Demi

It depends on the intent. If you are deliberately hiding tags in your CSS because you don't want search engines to find them, that's black hat, in my opinion. If there is a legitimate usability or design reason to put these tags in your CSS, then my feeling is it's ok.

However, Google's own staff recommend against using CSS to hide text so I would probably avoid it if you can.

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1 Comments:

At 4:55 AM , Marc said...

Agreed. Hiding H1 tags is probably not a good idea. It's so important to stay on the straight and narrow when working on Web sites. All it takes is one "dirty trick" whether by accident or on purpose, and there goes your page rank.

 

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