Optimizing the homepage : should I have a h1 or not?
-
Hi everyone,
I am launching a debate that may seem a bit basic for the most experienced of you
In fact, after completing internships in two different agencies, I had quite opposite views of the optimization process for the homepage:
-
View 1: The home page should be optimized on a keyword and should definitely have a h1.
-
View 2: The home page is a branded page and should not necessarily have an h1 (unlike other pages).
Bonus question: assuming that the view 1 is the right one, is it a good idea to put a h1 on the logo (only for the homepage) ?
Thank you very much for your help
-
-
Thank you for your answers easyrider and Ewan!
-
I believe the answer to almost every question about SEO should begin with "it depends" and therefore I think neither of the two views you have quoted can be right in all circumstances.
The best solution for a particular case might depend on the structure of the page and that should be driven first and foremost by providing the best solution for visitors which may not be the same as prescribed by an SEO rule book.
Re. bonus question:
My home page (www.adjuice.co.uk) has its logo as its H1 so is an example of what you describe in your bonus question. The home page currently ('touch wood') ranks very well for lots of competitive terms so I find it difficult to imagine that this arrangement could be disadvantageous in any way.
-
Well I would say a page always needs an H1. However, due to recent turn of events with Google in does not necessarily have to have your keyword in it. But it should be an H1 that is on-topic. Google is clever enough now to tell the general context of the page. As Rand said in the last whiteboard friday (HERE) there is now a lot more to on-page SEO than the old method of keyword in the url, title, description, H tags etc etc
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Crawl Attempt Errors & Homepage Not Ranking
Hi all, I have scanned the community forum thoroughly to find a solution to this issue and noticed some detailed and informed responses, but I am not sure which apply to the issue we are currently having. We are receiving a lot of 803 Crawl Attempt Errors on a weekly basis for our site www.mangofurniture.co.uk and also our homepage isn't ranking and I can't help but think that the two are linked. We have some rankings for the internal pages and have a couple of other sites that use the same template as www.mangofurniture.co.uk that are doing well with no crawl attempt errors and strong homepage rankings. There are a lot of great resources out there on the Moz forum and elsewhere but I am little unsure what applies to our problem or whether to two are linked at all. We have tried rewriting the homepage and developing the internal linking system but to no success as yet. Also, because the site is fairly new so the link profile is quite small at present. Any advice regarding this would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | FurnitureGeek0 -
Multiple H1 Tags on Page
Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
I have a GoDaddy website and have multiple homepages
I have GoDaddy website builder and a new website http://ecuadorvisapros.com and I notices through your crawl test that there are 3 home pages http://ecuadorvisapros with a 302 temporary redirect, http://www.ecuadorvisapros.com/ with no redirect and http://www.ecuadorvisapros/home.html. GoDaddy says there is only one home page. Is this going to kill my chances of having a successful website and can this be fixed? Or can it. I actually went with the SEO version thinking it would be better, but it wants to auto change my settings that I worked so hard at with your sites help. Please keep it simple, I am a novice although I have had websites in the past I know more about the what's than the how's of websites. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | ScottR.0 -
Why is our login page ranked higher than our homepage?
Hello everyone, When you search "ProtonMail", our Login page always ranks #1 while our homepage ranks #2. We're unsure why this is happening. The PA for our homepage is higher than the login page, and the login page itself basically has zero content except for a login form. We don't want to put the login page on robots.txt, we want to do our best to preserve it so that people can login. However it still does not make sense to us how the login page ranks higher, even though it has a lesser PA. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | kevinzh0 -
Page that appears on SERPs is not the page that has been optimized for users
This may seem like a pretty newbie question, but I haven't been able to find any answers to it (I may not be looking correctly). My site used to rank decently for the KW "Gold name necklace" with this page in the search results:http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=302This was the page that I was working on optimizing for user experience (load time, image quality, ease of use, etc.) since this page was were users were getting to via search. A couple months ago the Google SERP's started showing this page for the same query (also ranked a little lower, but not important for this specific question):http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=314Which is a white gold version of the necklaces. This is not what most users have in mind (when searching for gold name necklace) so it's much less effective and engaging.How do I tell Google to go back to old page/ give preference to older page / tell them that we have a better version of the page / etc. without having to noindex any of the content? Both of these pages have value and are for different queries, so I can't canonical them to a single page. As far as external links go, more links are pointing to the Yellow gold version and not the white gold one.Any ideas on how to remedy this?Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Don340 -
Will Google hit me because I hide my H1 tag?
I read an article this morning regarding keywords on a web page. In the article it said that Google would hit anyone putting keywords on a web page but then hiding them from anyone visiting the website. This makes sense. What it did make me think about though is the technique I use when building a website. If, for example, I'm building a website for "Acme Cheap Products". In the header of the page, I will have a H1 tag as well as an image tag for the company's logo. As the logo has the company name on it, I would usually put the company name in a H1 tag as well, and then hide the H1 tag, so I wouldn't have a logo and then a title next to it saying the same thing as the logo. The question is though, would this sort of technique trigger Google in to hitting my site?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0 -
To get homepage to rank highly for a given term, do you only add the term(and variations) to the homepage?
If adding the term on all pages then won't the pages start competing with each other in the SERP? I'm building a site for a client who wants to rank highly for 'Southern California general contractors' and its not clear to me whether to fit these keywords (and variations) only into the homepage or if I should try to fit them into all pages.
Technical SEO | | kennysmith0