Member Avatar for phoenix06007

Use of Header Tags H1 - H4
Hiding this technique behind CSS code so that it does not disrupt the look of the page:

My name is Blank Blank and I would like to thank you for visiting the <H3>Name of page</H3> web site. Here at <H3>Name of page</H3>, quality is our number one priority. It seems that most <H4>manufacturers</H4> quickly forget how important each player really is. At <H3>Name of page</H3>, we take every order with the confidence that we will provide the hardest and longest lasting <H2>manufactured items</H2> on the market.

I have adjusted some of the content to protect the name of my client and what he does but I am sure you get the jist of where this is heading. I am getting conflicting information and not sure how toe proceed here. My seo guy says its ok its ok but my designers who code the site say NO WAY this is spam.

Will this hurt? Will this help?? Does it matter???

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The snippet posted by uses heading elements inside paragraph text and (by the description) masks them with CSS. and rightly flagged the issue; below is focused, practical guidance to fix it and avoid search-engine problems.

Heading elements are semantic structure — they tell users and bots what each section is about. They should be used as titles for sections, not as hidden containers for extra keywords. Good references: MDN — heading elements and Google’s SEO Starter Guide. Google’s webmaster guidance also warns against hidden or deceptive content that’s intended to manipulate ranking: Webmaster Guidelines.

Practical steps:

  • Remove heading tags where the text is just decorative or part of normal sentences. Headings should read like section titles.
  • If the design requires a different look, style headings with CSS (font, weight, spacing). Do not hide headings with display:none, visibility:hidden, text-indent:-9999px, tiny font-size, or very low contrast solely to game rankings.
  • Audit pages quickly: search the output HTML for <h1>–<h6> usage, then inspect computed styles to find hidden or off-screen text patterns. For large sites, run a crawler that reports heading density and duplicated heading text.
  • Use proper on-page signals instead: concise title tags, a single clear H1 for the page topic, meaningful H2/H3 subheads, and schema where relevant.

If there’s concern a manual action was triggered, check Google Search Console’s Manual Actions report and follow the remediation/review workflow. The safest path is user-first content and clear, semantic markup — it both avoids penalties and actually helps real visitors.

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Member Avatar for jreseo

That is spam, or at least misuse of the tag. I don't think you will face a penalty but I'll bet the search engines will not give you any lift from using <Hn> tags this way.

The conventional wisdom is that using <Hn> tags correctly will give a little boost to keywords used in those tags, with the idea that headings are important text on a page and, like <title> tags are generally limited in length and prominent. However, any pattern of use that indicates abuse will likely negate any benefit there. This includes overuse, not using it as a heading (as above), CSS modifications that make font small or low contrast to background, etc.

As always, stick to best practices and you will do better than trying this type of thing.

Member Avatar for andyf

yeah, its similar to spamming and playing with Google algorithm, you should not use such BLACKHAT technique for booting keyword ranking, once Google point it out you may have to face it and our ranking may get lower.

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