Can H1 and H2s be hidden

[proplayer44]

I'm having a guy build me a website from scratch, no CMS, just his code. I only have a smidgin of experience with SEO but I know a little. He knows nothing about SEO.

He's built a lot of the site and now I've asked him to add H1 titles and H2 titles in the code with the long tail keywords that get created for each page so Google will rank better.

He's says we don't need them but could put them in the code but hidden so they don't show on the page. Would that suffice or would google penalize me SEO wise for making them hidden?

 

[Mightier]

Hiding stuff from Google is a bad idea.

Write better copy so that you can incorporate other phrases into your headings.

 

[dchuk]

you two should both read this: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

 

[aproxaday]

Don't hide or trick google in anyway. It may work at first, but it'll fuck you in the end.

 

[proplayer44]

Hey thanks for that link, there is a lot of good stuff.

I'm not trying to trick google at all, it's because of the structure of the site. The visitors will be adding the content, it's a social site, but I want their Title to also be in the H1 and H2 for SEO. I don't want to trick google, I want google to see the H1 and H2 titles for better SEO but don't necessarily need the viewer to see them repeated.

 

[seohug]

Use the H1 for page title and H2 or H3 for subtitles within content i.e.:

 

[Elvis]

A few months ago I saw a local web design firm was still hiding H1 tags within comments. I can't believe people are still doing that.

Anyway, if your designer knows CSS, there's no need to hide the headings, just style them.