Will Google Frown Links In H Tags?

I would like to have my lower header tags (h3 and h4) as links.

As in: <h3><a href="/">Heading</a></h3>

The lower head tags will be used in the main section pages (home and others) to introduce text about sub sections in my site. I want visitors to be able to click on the heading and go to the pertaining sections. H4 will be a sub header to h3 that will also lead to the same section as h3. So if visitors click either link they will go to the section pertaining to that heading.

I want to use header tags, instead of just doing styles formatted with big fonts, because they may help SEO, however I’m wondering if linking these tags is frowned upon.

What’s your take?

that's not valid HTML -- even if many browsers will recover from the error. The anchor tag is an inline element, and it should not contain a block element such as a div, h1, p and so on.

Actually it will pass as long as the "h1" is before the "a" tag.

I just did the test right now as XHTML 1.0 Strict and it passes.

Absolutely no problem with Google if placing links inside headings, and as you found out, contrary to the second post, with the link inside the heading tag it's perfectly valid html.

rather, you can put image tag inside your heading element.
<h3><img="" alt="abc"</h3>

It also works.

Eh? How does that work as a replacement for a link? The OP questioned the validity of placing links inside heading tags, yet you suggest that they'd be better off with images?

Lots of blogs have their post titles as hyperlinks and also in <H> tags. No problem.

Thanks guys, this helps a lot. There's not enough info online about this topic. I searched for hours and found nothing concrete and what I did find was 5 or 6 years old. I'm glad there are forums like this one though!