font size= vs h1, h2, etc

[Phillip Mann]

Does it make any difference to the search engines if I use "font
size=" or "h's" in my html?

Phil

www.BluegrassBanjo.com
www.BluegrassBanjo.org

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Does it make any difference to the search engines if I use "font
size=" or "h's" in my html?

Heading elements are given more weight by the search engines than common
text, regardless of size.

Size them with CSS.
http://k75s.home.att.net/fontsize.html

BTW, you will want to get rid of all the animated stuff and moving
marquees on your site. In the opinion of many, that is almost as
annoying as unsolicited music or sound.

 

[Sherm Pendley]

Does it make any difference to the search engines if I use "font
size=" or "h's" in my html?

Google keeps their algorithms secret, but it's pretty well-known that key-
words found in headings rank higher than those found in ordinary text.

That said, why on earth would you *want* to use presentational markup? This
is 2007, not 1997. The use of symantically meaningful markup should be a
no-brainer at this point.

sherm--

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:44:34
GMT Phillip Mann scribed:

Does it make any difference to the search engines if I use "font
size=" or "h's" in my html?

It depends on whether you're trying to spell it or use it.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:44:34
GMT Phillip Mann scribed:


It depends on whether you're trying to spell it or use it.

HTML *needs* H's. Without them, you're only coding TML.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Sherm Pendley:

Google keeps their algorithms secret, but it's pretty well-known that
key- words found in headings rank higher than those found in ordinary
text.

Well, it's at least a reasonable assumption. But beware that this is
probably just relative to the rest of the document's content. That is, your
h1 and h2 content might matter much more than your copy text, but not more
than someone else's text.

That said, why on earth would you *want* to use presentational
markup? This is 2007, not 1997. The use of symantically meaningful
markup should be a no-brainer at this point.

Even in 1997, heading markup was a good idea.

The real question is why this would matter to anyone. Surely if someone is
wondering whether to use <font> or <h1>, he needs a crash course on web
design and should not write any HTML (more) before he has got a clue. If he
needed to ask, there are lots of fundamental questions he should ask but
probably doesn't unless we point out that he is now completely lost.

Yet, if you are working with existing pages, perhaps spat out by poor
"wysiwyg" tools, containg <font> markup where headings should appear, then
this is one of the cases where it _might_ be useful to modify existing
markup (which is usually waste of time). If you have such pages and you have
no time to rewrite them (which is what they really need), then, yes,
replacing <font> markup by heading markup and some simple CSS would make
sense. It might still be futile, if the pages as a whole are very poorly
written, in terms of markup.

 

[Phillip Mann]

Heading elements are given more weight by the search engines than common
text, regardless of size.

Size them with CSS.
http://k75s.home.att.net/fontsize.html

BTW, you will want to get rid of all the animated stuff and moving
marquees on your site. In the opinion of many, that is almost as
annoying as unsolicited music or sound.

Thanks, Beauregard!

Phil

www.BluegrassBanjo.com
www.BluegrassBanjo.org

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, Jukka K. Korpela ([email protected]) feverishly
typed...

The real question is why this would matter to anyone. Surely if
someone is wondering whether to use <font> or <h1>, he needs a crash
course on web design and should not write any HTML (more) before he
has got a clue. If he needed to ask, there are lots of fundamental
questions he should ask but probably doesn't unless we point out that
he is now completely lost.

The sad situation is that many places -- educational establishments
(colleges, universities etc) included -- teach the bad HTML that was
prevalant in the late 90's. I worked at a local university a few years ago,
in the admin department for a network of training outlets that they ran. I
saw the course notes for the web design part of one of the courses they ran.
It actually suggested using a higher font size for text that was a heading,
instead of suggesting using the appropriate heading element. This was (I
think) 2003...

A few weeks ago I was interviewing people for a web dev role in the company
I worked for then (I've moved since then). One of the guys I interviewed
showed me some stuff he had done for his course which was good old fashioned
presentational HTML. I asked him if he had been taught this at uinversity
and he said "yes". The rest of his interview was spent re-teaching him...
:-s

Cheers,
Nige

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

..I saw the course notes for the web design part of one of the courses
they ran. It actually suggested using a higher font size for text
that was a heading, instead of suggesting using the appropriate
heading element. This was (I think) 2003...

Same here, at my local community college. The professor had no idea what
CSS was, and a course prerequisite was you had to own FrontPage.

I tried to explain, tastefully, but he wouldn't listen.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 07 Sep 2007 07:19:35 GMT
Blinky the Shark scribed:

HTML *needs* H's. Without them, you're only coding TML.

Well, maybe the guy's extremely nervous and wants to avoid the "hyper"...