Re: whether a header tag on a link helps or not, I don’t know. But regardless if you want your site and data crawled, then clearly you need links for Google to follow.
Probably a few things for you to explore when using text as links:
- Create a Link element that holds the link, and then place a text element within that space.
- Use a text element and write in a hyperlink that has the thing’s slug (this feels most SEO friendly since the URL will show up in your sitemap and the thing has its own unique URL now with its name in it)
- Use a text element and put in a hyperlink that passes a parameter (like the thing’s unique ID). On the page it goes to, have it look for the unique ID on page load and then load up that thing.
Re: having text links to stay on same page vs. open up a new tab…