Reply To: Site Logo: H1 text vs HTML image?

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From an ess-ee-oh perspective, I agree with @Paulie_D that it’s not the “right” question to be asking. If Google is going to find some bit of text “spammy,” it’s because it’s spammy, not because it’s in an<h1> vs. an image’s alt text.

As whats-his-name said,H1 vs. img is more about whether or not the logo is content.

I completely disagree, however, that logos are necessarily (or even normally) “content.” They are branding; more akin to styling than content. If you remove the branding (think text-only browsing), it probably doesn’t change the message. Not content: use CSS.

(Of course, people will pay $60 for a $4 baseball cap that has the Nike logo on it, so maybe the specific example he used was valid.)

As for H1s, webpages have titles. Oftentimes, the title makes the logo seem a bit redundant: “Nike (swoosh)” makes sense, but “FedEx (FedEx)” doesn’t. Image replacement time.

When the title and logo both stay, the logo still (probably) shouldn’t be an img. As above —unless the logo is actually the subject of the page— it probably still belongs to CSS. Pseudo-elements, or something.

IMHO, of course. And yes, all that being said,

I don’t think it will make or break your website’s success.