All SEO tips say to use heading tags (h1-h6) to help your site rank better in search engines.  Does it affect how well heading tags work with search engines if you use CSS to change their styling, such as their font size and color? 

ajetrumpet

11-04-2010, 10:24 AM

I am not an expert at this, but the last article read about meta tags said that they are now even useless.  So I seriously doubt that using header tags have any effect on a search engine ranking at all.  After all, they're HTML tags, nothing else.  aren't they?  robots don't search for HTML tags on pages, as far as I know. 

The other thing that people never think of when trying to improve their search ranking is the fact that search engines are run by for-profit companies too.  They want people to use their engine, and if results comes up that aren't popular and don't have a track record of being click on often, they're not going to show up regardless of what you do. 

I personally think that search engine ranking is a joke.  I'd concentrate your efforts elsewhere until the word of mouth has gotten to the point where the website is garnering a significant amount of traffic. 

abduraooft

11-04-2010, 11:16 AM

So I seriously doubt that using header tags have any effect on a search engine ranking at all.  After all, they're HTML tags, nothing else.  aren't they?  robots don't search for HTML tags on pages, as far as I know.  That's wrong, I'd say. 
Read http://boagworld.com/technology/semantic-code-what-why-how and
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-analyze-a-page-html-semantic-structure/7515/

I personally think that search engine ranking is a joke.  I'd concentrate your efforts elsewhere until the word of mouth has gotten to the point where the website is garnering a significant amount of traffic. 
I've a site to which ~62% of the traffic is through search engines. 

@OP: It won't be an issue to apply styles on the heading tags, to change the color of font-size, though setting display/visibility properties to hide them from the users' view may cause some issues. 

teedoff

11-04-2010, 03:34 PM

I am not an expert at this, but the last article read about meta tags said that they are now even useless.  So I seriously doubt that using header tags have any effect on a search engine ranking at all.  After all, they're HTML tags, nothing else.  aren't they?  robots don't search for HTML tags on pages, as far as I know. 

Dont confuse heading tags with meta tags that are placed inside the head section of your page. 

As Abdura pointed out, heading tags DO have a great bearing on SEO.  If you do a google search on the top SEO tricks, you will find some good articles and gain some knowledge on your own. 

I too have a company I work for that is a 100% online based company.  I havent looked at the numbers, but I would say that probably at least 75% of our revenue is generated by search engines.  Search any product and our site will most always rank in the top 3 if not number 1.  And btw, our site rankings are all organic.  No pay per click. 

Now styling your <h1> tags will have no bearing on rankings, to answer the OP.  Search engine spiders look at content, not how the content is styled. 

ajetrumpet

11-04-2010, 06:41 PM

I stand corrected, so I thought as much! 

But then again, I don't do much business online so I don't put much weight on search engines if people are searching for general content.