Small and hidden H1 tag

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Perry Bernard: You should never do this. Google cannot be “tricked” by this sort of tactic. If the text does not render on the page, it will be an obvious signal to Google that it has no importance at all to your users, and therefore no importance at all to the seo value of your page.
• 
  Youssef Zidouri: Perry Bernard we’re not aiming to trick anyone it’s just a case of keeping the page sleek looking
• 
  Perry Bernard: Youssef Zidouri but in fact you are. You are trying to tell Google that the h1 tag content is important and at the same time tell your visitors it’s not worth having on the page. By any current standards in SEO practice, this is a trick, and Google won’t care about your keyword in an invisible tag.
• 
  Michael Martinez: Why not just create content relevant to whatever query you want to rank for?
• 
  Youssef Zidouri: Michael Martinez it’s an e-commerce website and to write personalised merch at the top of the page looks a bit tacky so we want to keep it sleek looking
• 
  Michael Martinez: Youssef Zidouri Trust me - just slamming extra, irrelevant keywords onto the page is going to look tacky.Add a blog to the site and write interesting articles about how the products can be used. You can target all the queries you want that way.
• 
  Ryan BeMiller: What Michael Martinez said.
• 
  Christy Bannerman: Negatives, yes there are. If you try to disguise text by making it so small or changing its colour so it`s invisible this is noticed and flagged.
• 
  David Gossage: So you want to rank a page for a keyword which isn`t relevant to the keyword?
• 
  Youssef Zidouri: David Gossage no it’s jsut a case of it being an e-commerce page and we don’t want a long tail keyword as the title of the page it jsut looks tacky - rather have it hidden away if possible
• 
  Beyond Cambodia: Even if you rank, it will take a few days that Google takes your rank back. Without real related content, no way to sustain any rank.
• 
  Frank Geric: In a word, no. This is a black hat technique and will get you penalized. Google does not care if you have good intent, they only care that you follow the rules.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: AS ABOVE - "ARE THERE ANY NEGATIVES IN DOING THAT"?Yes... and also, are there any positives in doing it? No.H1 should (must) be relevant to the content of the page... if it is a long title then think of ways to shorten it - BUT still make it relevant. Is the page already live and ranking? What keywords are being used to find the page?
• 
  Greg Gifford: Yeah, it’s a really bad idea
• 
  Ashir Azeem: Yes, it will count as a negative point because of an irrelevant keyword! If you want to change text or remove this keyword from the h1 tag make your relevant text and keyword h1 and move the irrelevant keywords downward. Also, make a blog section on your site and cover all informational keywords related to this product and interlink these articles with this product Michael Martinez as he said. Hope it will help out you
• 
  Huma Kanwal: Obviously. You can`t trick Google on such a crucial heading.
• 
  Ben Zemah: Huma Kanwal cutt.ly/5BQ7C7O
• 
  Richard Hearne: Is it only me who feels the OP is going to deem all comments here irrelevant, and simply ignore all advice provided?
• 
  Youssef Zidouri: Richard Hearne relax Richard I’m listening lad
• 
  Michael Martinez: Youssef Zidouri You can always experiment with 1 or a small number of pages and see if you like the results.Just understand that it takes the search engines time to reassess a page after you change (and that could be several months, depending on how complex the page is).Also, any negative signals that might adversely affect the site entirely may require a minimum percentage of changed URLs before their cumulate effects manifest themselves.Hiding content from users (that you want to influence search algorithms) is the problem. But finding creative ways to balance what you want with what you need is usually acceptable.