Do pages with fewer headings rank higher?
-
I've found several good quality, high ranking pages with excellent content, 500 to 1000 words. These pages are made by people who obviously know what they're doing.
These pages only have one headline the h1 at the top of the page.
Some of the sites use CSS div boxes and other things to make text look like a heading but do not have h2 or h3 tags or bigger font size.
Could it be that a single headline tells Google that this page is about a single topic and that several sub headings muddy the water and so reduce page rank.
Do multiple headings or subheadings affect page rank or is it just a personal style choice?
-
Hello Tommy
This is the type of site I'm talking about. It's full of good content, ranks highly and looks professional.http://www.seomark.co.uk/how-many-backlinks/
But the pages that have what look like subheadings are just CSS classes. Many of the pages don't have any sub headings at all.
The person who made the site obviously knows what he's doing, I wondered if he knew something I don't.
-
Hi Philip,
It is strange that top rate SEO consultants are doing so. In the video that I've attached, Matt Cutts also mentioned that some people use ALL H1 headers and used CSS to make it look like it is not and got a lot of compliants. I believe Google is able to catch that so thats why I'm saying it is strange for top rate SEO consultants are doing that.
-
Thanks Tommy, Kevin and Mike.
Everything you say is just how I've been taught and sites like SEOmoz and Wordtracker agree with this approach. Just as importantly, user experience and common sense say that proper use of subheadings is the right way to do things.
What I'm not sure about is why some top rate SEO consultants don’t use subheadings at all. Sometimes they've gone to the trouble of making it obvious (using CSS) that some lines are headlines but don't use h2 tags etc.
I was wondering if there were any benefits in doing this.
-
I don't think that its fewer heading tags making the page rank better, I think that the pages are probably good enough that it doesn't matter there are no subheadings. From my understanding, breaking an article or blog post or page into subheadings and sub-categories by using the various header tags will help with ease of readability. Sometimes people scan the whole page prior to reading (or leaving) and want to see if there's anything to catch their interest. Having a pertinent h2, h3 or h4 could possibly get those people to stop and read a bit when they may otherwise have just left from impatience. I think too many header tags can be a bad thing though. If your page has gotten to the point where you have one h1, four h2s, 10 h3s, 27 h4s, 17 h5s.... then you may be doing it wrong.
-
Hi Philip,
Having multiple H1 header doesn't affect page rank. It is ok to have multiple H1 header for each section. However, don't over do it. Don't use H1 for the whole page because Google will see that and will take that into consideration in the algorithm. The attached video from Google Webmaster's Youtube page explains that.
Hpoe this helps Phil.
-
I think good organization (with subheadings) that increases the user experience actually helps rankings as it will encourage inbound links and time-on-site.
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
-
What to do if ranking the wrong KW?
I wrote a blog article targeting a long-tail KW - "[primary KW] pricing revealed". the article is performing so well that is actually ranking 2nd nationally for my primary KW. I would rather have my conversion page rank for my primary KW obviously. I'm considering cutting and pasting the content from my blog page onto my conversion page with a 301 redirect from the blog to the conversion page. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks, Ryan
On-Page Optimization | | RyanMeighan0 -
Sitelinks to internal pages
Hi Moz Community, Is it only possible to get sitelinks to your main domain in the SERPs or can you also get them to internal pages in the SERPs? i.e. if this were to pop up in the SERP: www.mysite.com/page1
On-Page Optimization | | Brian_Dowd
Can I get sitelinks such as the examples below:
Sitelink1: www.mysite.com/page1/page1a
Sitelink2: www.mysite.com/page1/page1b
Sitelink3: www.mysite.com/page1/page1c
etc. Just curious and I haven't really find anything like that on the internet. How can I set them up? Thanks.0 -
Finacial pages markup
I was wondering if there is away to use Schema for stock market pages?
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0 -
On page links
Hi I am really intrigued by Bloomberg strategy. if you look at their article pages they are full with internal links done with what I assume to be an automated process (too many pages to be done manually). it seems to work for them. I would love to hear your opinions.
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-26/uber-said-close-to-raising-funding-at-up-to-40b-value.html0 -
Is it better to have an hreflang go to the home page in a different language if there's no corresponding page
If I have some pages in English, but not in Spanish on my website: Should my hreflang go to the home page on the Spanish site? Or should I not have an "es-MX" hreflang for that page? Ideally I would have all the pages translated, but this has not all been done yet.
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Ok so I am very new to MOZ, and we have just set up our PRO account and campaign. When we got our crawl results we had 4 pages with "too many on-page links". All of these pages correspond with our blog, which is a wordpress hosted blog that is integrated into our site. Our site is www.moxicopy.com and the blog is www.moxicopy.com/blog I am confused on how we have over 100 on page links on these pages, as we have very few links on our blog.
On-Page Optimization | | Moxicopy.com0 -
Landing Pages
Howdy Guys, We currently have around 19 landing pages that are near enough identical for each make of car. The content on each page isn't identical but you can tell its a template. Do you think we should change this and just target models instead of makes. Thanks, Scott
On-Page Optimization | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Too many on-page links
Hi, My website - www.thepartyhouse.com.au is showing as having too many on-page links for over 4,000 pages. Take for example the homepage which is showing as 188 links, but I don't understand this because I've used SEO tools to display the links and I am showing around 90 links on this page. How can I see what all the links are? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Spyre0