[Suggestion] Implementing H1 Headings without coding

**Drwyd** · 27 March 2009, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by Charles Moir

... until someone can show any merit or any benefit at all in having H1 tags, this is not something we'd offer ...

This might throw some light on the subject, it seems to imply that heading tags do have an impact on SEO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

Drwyd

**covoxer** · 27 March 2009, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by Drwyd

it seems to imply that heading tags do have an impact on SEO.

Not at all. Not a single word about SEO. That was an answer on the question about how many headers it is best to have per page. And the answer was in the reader friendliness plane, not SEO influence.
Typical advice regarding reasonable design.

**richinri** · 27 March 2009, 09:40 PM

To say the <h> tags are non-essential is incorrect. The textual hierarchy of your content should be defined by <h> tags because the search engines use the <h> tag to better index the content of your site.
Matches between meta-tags and <h> tags in your text are invaluable for indexing, especially for deep searches which will become the internet norm.
Think <h> tags with you are putting text on your site - particularly when it matches anything in your meta-tags.

**Soquili** · 27 March 2009, 11:10 PM

Originally Posted by richinri

To say the <h> tags are non-essential is incorrect. The textual hierarchy of your content should be defined by <h> tags because the search engines use the <h> tag to better index the content of your site.
Matches between meta-tags and <h> tags in your text are invaluable for indexing, especially for deep searches which will become the internet norm.
Think <h> tags with you are putting text on your site - particularly when it matches anything in your meta-tags.

Can you provide an authoritative reference confirming your statements?

**richinri** · 28 March 2009, 12:38 AM

Study html, and proper coding of web pages - this is no secret. This was the purpose of <h> tags from the beginning. Everybody thinks it was for appearance only but not so. It was to properly organize your text to maximize organization for the web.
The internet runs on visuals but is indexed by plain text. <h> tags, alt and title attributes, meta-tags and, of course, text which are all congruent will greatly assist people finding you for your exact content. This is the sort of stuff SEO companies charge people a lot for. They always "alter" the page and these are a few of the things they pay attention to.

**steve.ledger** · 28 March 2009, 01:03 AM

Originally Posted by richinri

The internet runs on visuals but is indexed by plain text.

Wouldn't that be "The Web runs on visuals" ?
The internet was around before the WWW was..

**Soquili** · 28 March 2009, 01:18 AM

Originally Posted by richinri

Study html, and proper coding of web pages - this is no secret. This was the purpose of <h> tags from the beginning. Everybody thinks it was for appearance only but not so. It was to properly organize your text to maximize organization for the web.
The internet runs on visuals but is indexed by plain text. <h> tags, alt and title attributes, meta-tags and, of course, text which are all congruent will greatly assist people finding you for your exact content. This is the sort of stuff SEO companies charge people a lot for. They always "alter" the page and these are a few of the things they pay attention to.

OK you do not have any authoritative reference. I must assume this is all your personal opinion. What an SEO company charges for is not necessarily any proof that it is effective. It is only what they can convince a customer they need.

Please do not try to confuse issues with your personal opinion.

Answers provided by Covoxer are authoritative in reference to Web Designer. He is part of the Xara Ltd development staff and made the HTML export filter.

**Drwyd** · 28 March 2009, 02:43 AM

Does anyone have an authoritative reference? In support of either view?

Richinri's position seems to be the dominant view amongst the vast majority of SEO professionals and parallels every thing I have read over the last year but finding definitive proof (either way) is proving to be elusive.

I very much hope that Covoxer is right; I can then design in XWD safe in the knowledge that I am not putting myself (and my clients) at a disadvantage as regards SE ranking.

Drwyd

**remi** · 28 March 2009, 02:55 AM

Is Google an authoritative reference enough in this case?

see http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...4&postcount=17

Regards,
Remi

**richinri** · 28 March 2009, 06:41 AM

Like I said, this is no secret. 13 years of doing this stuff has taught me a few things. What does the H in the <h> tag stand for? HEADER. Designing at present in XWD MIGHT negatively affect your SE ranking IF you choose to ignore the code completely. This has been my point in many posts.
As soon as text is grouped - it becomes a graphic. This means your text is not analyzed by the SE and I doubt the alt or title tag will help much as a SE replacement for paragraphs of text.
The thinking that one can design away graphically without any code consideration is an unfulfilled pipe dream at present.
If one keeps a few things in mind - there is no reason you can't use XWD without concern about SE rankings. XWD has placeholders - great. But you can screw up your page big time by putting in invalid code.
I was playing around with some nice graphic fonts I have the other day and had a bunch of text on a page - all grouped so I could get that same font whether the person viewing had the font or not. I then realized ALL the text on my site was now a graphic. Not good for the SE, so I ungrouped the text and made other design decisions that I could live with.