[RESOLVED] SEO and header tags

nrg_alpha

A quick question...

I want to use a series of <h2> tags for graphic sub-headers (a single <h1> will be reserved for a graphic header at the very top of the page).

Since within CSS, the h2 tag itself is going to load a 'sprite sheet' (multiple graphics [in this case, graphic sub-headers] as a single graphic) as a CSS background image, I need to instill multiple different id's within the h2 tags. Example: <h2 id="whatever01">text goes here</h2> where as h2#whatever01 in the stylesheet will have specific pixel co-ordinates and dimensions which isolate a particular portion of the h2 background.

I am going to assume that attributes within header tags doesn't have any adverse effects on spider crawling. Can anyone confirm or deny this? The only reason I ask this is because every example I run across with regards to this technique has no attributes.. just plain header tags..<h1>...</h1><h2>...</h2> etc..

NogDog

If it is valid [X]HTML, then any robot that has a problem with it is a very poor robot. As I'm pretty sure all the top robots are using established DOM libraries, it should not be an issue. (Just be sure to validate your HTML.)

nrg_alpha

NogDog;10898244 wrote:
If it is valid [X]HTML, then any robot that has a problem with it is a very poor robot. As I'm pretty sure all the top robots are using established DOM libraries, it should not be an issue. (Just be sure to validate your HTML.)

Thanks, Nog.

And duly noted. Me and validation are very close friends. I is a good boy in that department. 🙂

foyer

Did you do it? Did you put the attribute in the header tag and check it's validation?

I just want to know the results

nrg_alpha

foyer;10898249 wrote:
Did you do it? Did you put the attribute in the header tag and check it's validation?

I just want to know the results

I'll be testing it sometime within the hour or so. Still wrapping up the home page (retro-fitting) as well as cleaning up some stuff (like removal of some apparently obsolete meta tags such as keyword and author by example). Will provide an update soon enough.

nrg_alpha

Ok.. so far, so good. It has all been updated and validates nicely.

I'll have to give it some time to see if my rankings improve (or tumble). I'm rather new to this whole SEO thing... so I may still need to make some adjustments (make that, in all likelyhood, I'll have to make some changes). I haven't incorporate <h2> on any page other than the home page.. I'll take a break, then start going through all the other pages and converting those graphic headers to <h2> based ones as well.

As a current guage (using google's search), when I search for 'olsen portfolio' (without quotes), I come in at the bottom of page 1 (I actually started out somewhere on page 2 months ago.. so I'm advancing it seems [for now]).

I'll check in from time to time to see if there are improvements (as I do realize that SEO is a moving target that takes HUGE amounts of factors into account and depending on what all the other 'olsen porfolio' websites are doing, it may (or may not) work in my favor.

Lastly, I signed up with Google's webmaster tools, and via xml-sitemaps, I generated an xml based sitmap file and submitted this to Google (all of this recommended by an SEO book I picked up and am in the middle of reading). FIngers crossed.

Cheers

foyer

Thanks for that google link, I too will create a xml-sitemap