Semantic content: images with alt attributes vs plain text?

One of the big arguments I constantly have about SEO is whether semantic content as images (with appropriate alt text) or simple text values will rank differently.

For example - which is better for SEO?

<h1>header</h1>

Or...

<h1><img src="header.gif" alt="header" /></h1>

...And does the H1 tag actually make a difference?

<p>header</p>

Not surprisingly it's an incredibly difficult subject to find any solution for so here at Code Required we're currently running a simple test to see what happens...

You can see the pages at:
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/frank.html
(header as image with alt and title attributes)

http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/fred.html
(everything as plain text)

and...
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/roger.html
("un-semantic" plain text)

We'll be monitoring the situation over the coming weeks on all the major search engines and posting updates here - in the meantime if you would like us to add other versions or have any comments please drop Jon an email.(For example should we do a sIfr version? should we do a version without title attributes on the images? etc).

Page name	Position
	Google	Yahoo	Altavista	Ask	Live/MSN
Frank (H1: image with alt and title)	1	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Fred (H1: as plain text)	2	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Roger (P: as plain text)	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Quite possibly the best CSS "hack" I've ever used...

After a good couple of days banging my head against the desk trying to figure out a solution to a Windows Safari "bug" I think I may have found the best CSS "hack" ever...

Ever wondered why Safari renders fonts bolder than all other browsers on Windows? Well it's down to a setting hidden away in the preferences dialog shown below:



Which is great if you can control everyone's install of Safari but, well let's face it - you can't. Which left me with the dilema... how the hell do I get the headers on my website to render as expected in Safari? Well fear not - just add the following line to your css:

text-shadow: 0 0 0 #FFF;

Where #FFF is whatever the background colour your text appears on and voila Safari's nasty aliasing "bug" has vanished!

Social networking for SEO... the next big thing?

We all know the huge benefits of social networking when it comes to SEO - there is no better way to get new visitors than those on recommendations from existing customers... I mean you're hitting your target audience without even trying.

Social Networking and content sharing have rapidly become the de facto standard in marketing on the web well Google might have just taken that to a whole new level with Google Friend Connect.

Still in a preview release (ie. not even beta yet) it's pretty exciting stuff and I strongly suggest you check out Mussie Shore's (he's the project manager) post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog entitled "Becoming Social".

Google Friend Connect let's you interact with users on social networking site such as Facebook and invite them to check out the website, post directly to their diaries etc and invite their friends - potentially increasing your audience virally with minimal effort... According to Mussie Shore you only need to know very little coding to get going in minutes!