Any Problems with this/Google?

Yeah I'd say so. I reckon you'd get pinged for keyword stuffing (you've got no real content, just a bunch of keyword-heavy headings) and abuse of heading tags.

You can only use h1 once per page.
Keyword/Header stuffing.
Ya, seems like a bad idea...

Only one h1 per Page is not a Requirement

That's grasping at straws, IMO. First line of answer: "If there's a logical reason ...".

Perhaps Deuce should have said "You should only have one H1 per page" but the keyword stuffing is surely going to hinder.

I understand how it is supposed to be used correctly.

My aim in this instance was also as much design based as it was SEO.

I see a great deal of artwork used around Web 2.0. And it makes more sense to use Text and heading tags as they achieve the effect naturally.

It would be a shame to have to use a big .gif when I can do it lighter with text.

My question is that on many reputable sites after an article you see a string of 5 - 10 keywords following the article. How is that considered ok? Or the tag clouds you see on the side of many blogs.

What is the difference?

Headings are supposed to be used to introduce blocks of text that relate to the heading. Just filling a page with headings and no other text is just spammy. The crux of the issue is do you expect people to sit and read through all that background text or is it just decoration? If it's decoration then it should be a background-image. If you say the text is there for search engines and not for people to read, then that's the very definition of the sort of thing that search engines consider as spammy and penalise you for.

Because those words are links to pages that feature content about those words; yours aren't.

But I get the feeling that with this SEO stuff, you're not really going to listen to anything else says if it contradicts your view. So just leave it as and see how you get on.

I get your point. When I am designing a page. I generally go for speed. As it is for decoration. My logical assumption was to go the lightest route.

No. I am asking because I want to make an educated decision about the best route to take. Which is why I appreciate the feedback! If I have to structure the artwork differently which seems to be the consensus. I imagine I would be stupid not to do so.

html5 allows as many H1's as you want, if they are in-fact headings of course. You could have an H1 for each section tag, if you needed too!

I would actually be interested in a discussion on HTML 5.

I would like to start using it. And to my understanding it is already going into more widespread use.

But phrases like this make me think it is better to wait.

HTML 5 Article from Wikipedia

Talking Points:

• "As of March 2010, the specification is in the Draft Standard state at the WHATWG, and in Working Draft state at the W3C"
• "but as of July 2010 HTML5 is still at Working Draft stage in the W3C."
• "Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012."
• "The criteria for the specification becoming a W3C Recommendation is “two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations”.[8] In an interview with TechRepublic, Hickson guessed that this would occur in the year 2022 or later."

Is it wise to start using this yet? Sounds a bit still in the developmental phase. I see some big names using it . . . so what is the right answer for a guy with small clients?

Also true of html4 and "xhtml" as well. It's perfectly valid html to do it, just real bad practice. And it will still be bad practice in HTML5 whenever that becomes anything real say, a decade or so from now.

There are lots of terrible things you can do in HTML that are still perfectly valid and will pass any validator. That doesn't make them unterrible.

I understand and have come to the conclusion that the method here is in fact terrible.

However. I am just curious as to your thoughts on this coming from google saying it is ok to use more than on h1 if you have a long page with different sections.

See Video

No it won't. As Cupid already said, it's part of HTML5's new sectioning outline. Each section is wrapped in a <section> tag and each section has its own h1 as the heading; the browser automatically determines the hierarchy from the nesting of sections and the author doesn't have to worry about having h1s-h6s out of sequence.

And HTML5 won't become real in a decade, it's real now: http://html5gallery.com/ There's over 600 examples on that site. People have jumped on that line about 2022 to completely disregard HTML5. CSS3 has been developed since 2005 and none of it has become an official recommendation yet, but with the arrival of IE9, all the latest major browsers will support at least some of CSS3. So something doesn't have to be 'real' or 'official' before it gains widespread browser or developer support.

I have an idea for you t-bone_two. Wrap each of your headings in sections or something similar, add descriptive text below it and hide it via visibility hidden.
Then have the hidden text visible on clicking the heading.
So this would allow google to read not only the heading but the descriptive text as it should ignore the visibility hidden css. It's possible google would not like having hidden text, I do remember reading about something along those lines many years ago, although I don't know how valid this concern is. Possibly using JavaScript to hide and un hide may be better.
You would need some fancy positioning and z-index.

I thought that only related to having inline styles that hid text. Moving the styles to an external stylesheet effectively removed the problem (and adding your CSS directory to your robots.txt was an added precaution).

Thanks for the advice . . .

You gave me plenty to research!

That's good to know, actually I don't think robots.txt is necessary as googlebot should totally ignore stylesheets.

If I was looking to keyword stuff. Which wasnt exactly my aim. Since google doesnt read stylesheets. I could just wrap the text in a div. Set the position to absolute and just do margin-right: 2000px; and I dont think it would know unless its inline. Please correct me if I am wrong.

If your content is spammy, it doesn't matter if it's viewable on screen or not, search engines will still index it. And they have algorithms clever enough to know that if your content is just a bunch of keyword-filled headings, that it's not intended for a real audience, but rather to game SEs and they won't like it.

I am not talking about making a site about guitars and putting in words unrelated like "porn" but stuff like "music", "fender" and "gibson"

It doesn't matter and you haven't read properly what I said. If you just include a bunch of keywords with no real sentences or paragraphs, SEs are going to know it's just intended to game them and is not intended for a real audience and they won't like it.

But there is no specific algorithm that can detect it if used modestly.

# of worldwide google employess in 2008: 19,804

# of websites as of 2005: 19,200,000,000

And now you're proving my point, so like I said before: do whatever you want to do.

I actually appreciate and value your advice. And I am going to take it on the first instance.

Thanks again!

I'm with Tyssen this thread is simply waiting for approval to play SEO tricks, go ahead do it!

Also this thread has a very deja vu feel about it, I seem to have the feeling we have run this debate ragged once before, hope I don't locate that thread and it's simply my imagination playing tricks!

This has been said once before, don't know where, don't know when:

Do not play games, Google is extremely good at working what and how to index sites. all a site has to do is be GENUINE! if it is and it presents real content, has a real and clear reason for existance, follows basic tenents for correct heading use, title tags, real content then Google will do it's thing if you are trying to 'game' the situation then you are starting to come across as less than genuine.

Having done things correctly you then look to Google provided services to increase your rankings and improve keyword searches, it really is bloody simple, Google will tell you how to further improve your sites placement, don't ask anyone else!

We are in danger of going over a lot of already long windedly covered stuff:
http://csscreator.com/topic/absolute-positioning-increse-seo

#17 in this thread comes from that older thread

First, I'm moving this thread to 'off topic' because it's really about seo, and not about a site check.

Second, jobbing Google and the other SEs is a losers game. Those guys are smarter about that stuff than anyone here will ever be.

Third, don't worry about seo. Provide real and useful content. Then use a vocabulary within your content that uses the terms your visitors will use when searching. I pay little attention to seo, but many of my pages rank very high on search results. For example, search for poetry + html + css, and my page is №5, and my blog post about the page on CSSCreator is №2. Inspect the source. There is no keyword stuffing. I don't even use the keyword meta data.

cheers,

gary