Question

Working with a layout in MVC3 that currently has no H1 element. The only thing that would qualify as an H1 would be a company logo in the banner.

If I put the image in the banner, along with text, what would the SEO implications be? Something like the following:

<h1>
    <img src="/path/to/transparent.gif" alt="My Company Logo" />
    <span style="display:none;">My Company Name</span>
</h1>

Or, could even position the span absolutely and position it out of the viewport. I know search engines are smarter about indexing only content that is shown to the user. But how should I approach this situation? Do I need the additional text, or will crawlers index the img’s alt attribute?

Answer 1

Yes, any inline element can be contained within an h1 element. And don’t worry about the span. Most search engines index the alt text. Even see the w3.org’s own website for an example. They do this with their logo.