Using Images as headings

Hi, from an SEO perspective, are there any major (as in should be avoided!) disadvantages by using images as a header to say a navigation list?

The reason I ask is that I have used a certain 'handwriting' font in my logo/header and was wondering if I can use that font to create a heading without any major SEO pitfalls?

Sam

Hi Sam_h
Its not important to have a definative title on the top of the page as you can put a title else where. The most important thing in terms of SEO is that you have <h1> tags somewhere, as well as the <title> tags in the head of the html.
If you are wanting to have text in the page title then hide it under the image or off screen using padding. This way they search engine will detect the text and give it relivance without actually seeing it on screen.

Thanks

Hi,

you can use. if you can keep it in text version then it will be much wiseable. But remember one thing that never use anything which is hidden to human visitors and visible to crawalers. always avoid the word "hide" and use the word "ethical" in seo

Hi,

having images as page headers will not hurt your SEO, however it would help your SEO if instead of having images as headings have text in the <h1> tags.

Hence just display the text off screen. Then if a user is not displaying a style sheet then text will apear instead.

Is doing this not viewed in the same light by Google as adding extra key words to a page but making the same colour as the background so that users do not see them?

Its not a big no-no to use images as headers, but if you can replace them with text it would be better. Remember the Search engines cant read images so they wont recognise them as content, and menus are incredubly keyword rich because 1) they represent the most important areas of your site and 2) they are usually repeated on many pages, which boosts their importance in the eyes of the search engine.

Have you tried to find a font that could replicate what you have in those graphic headers? With the use of a style sheet you could probably recreate them very closely without using any images.

Hope that helps?

I could use the font that I actually use in the .jpg to create the header...my concern with that though is that I'm assuming that if a user doesn't have that font installed, then it won't show up. If it does show up, then would it just be replaced with another?

You are right, if the user doesn't have the same font installed on their system then the font you used will be replaced.

You will have to weigh up whether or not it is important to use the font you like as an image and lose out a little bit on seo or use a less attractive font maybe.

are you using a single image (with an image map) or individual tabs ?

At any rate be sure to use comprehensive alt text (alt text is very beneficial when the SE crawl your site...alt text can be more effective than keywords in many cases)...

i'm just using a single image.

I have made a very quick test page here to try and show what I am talking about

http://onyahead.com/latestnews_test.php

compare this to the current live page

http://onyahead.com/latestnews.php

obviously design wise i would change a couple of things with the test page!

Another disadvantage of images is that screen readers cant recognise them so there can be usability problems. Thats why its important to use alt tags.

Yes this is correct but using alt tag is very helpful in targeting your keywords.