Styling Heading Tags

[Joseph Witchard]

I've read that using HTML heading tags for important content on a web page helps your page ranking on search engines. Does styling the heading tags with CSS, such as changing its font size and color, have a negative effect on how well heading tags help youi?

[Webitseo]

In a word, no.

[pixelsworld]

There is no problem in using CSS on an H1 tag. Effect of H1 will not be changed with use of CSS.

[mankis]

You can have problems only if you put text in the same or similar color as the background.

[criterion9]

You can have problems only if you put text in the same or similar color as the background.

That wouldn't affect SEO in any way as the search engine doesn't try to render any visual cues about content during its indexing process. That does however affect usability for actual users. :)

[mankis]

Text in the same color as background is called Black Hat SEO and your site can be completly removed from indexing http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353