Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Using H3-4 tags in the footer or sidebars: good or not?
-
Howdy SEOmoz fans!
Is it considered a good / bad / neutral practice to include H tags in the footer, as a mean to group a few links?
Take http://www.seomoz.org/ for instance:
- Voted Best SEO Tool 2010! = H2
- Looking for SEO consulting? = H3
- Product and Tools = H3- Company = H3
- etc.
I often see the same principle applied to sidebars.
I feel like because they don't contribute to the actual content structure and because they are repeated from page to page, we should avoid them, but I have nothing to back my intuition.[+] Perhaps they are helpful for usability (screen readers) and thin added value (i.e. category names that carry more weight than if they weren't headers).
What do you think?
Thanks for your time.
-
Hey Daniel,
Most footers are simply a series of horizontal lists of ancillary pages or popular pages, along with the odd copyrighted brand name a year and possibly a link to the Web designer/developer or SEO company. Therefore I see heading tags as overkill.
That said, I have seen more elaborate footers that contain a lot of useful information where adding headings to group the information could be useful.
Dan
-
Hi Daniel,
Any reason you would be less inclined to use heading tags in the footer vs sidebars?
Thanks
-
Hey Daniel,
I would say they offer a neutral benefit for the following reasons...
- Firstly, by nature sidebars are often replicated across multiple page. They are items that require high visibility and therefore can appear on all pages.
- From a usability perspective, it is good to keep consistency. Styling your H1-6 tags helps as visual aids to attract the users gaze to key parts of the content.
- If a potion of a page is duplicate content, it typically would not affect the rest of the content on the site from ranking. Although I would imagine malicious use of duplicate content could.
My preference would be to use lower Heading tags (say H4,5,6) as not to dilute the use of the primary heading tags, but ultimate this duplicated sidebar is going to offer little SEO benefit from a content perspective. Sidebars can promote other SEO benefits though such as internal linking and usability.
This can apply to the footer area as well, although I would be less inclined to use heading tags (I am sure there are exceptions)
Hope this helps,
Dan
-
In your example they do not appear to be headings, so bad. It looks like a
- would be more appropriate.
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
-
Can access my site using www
Hello, when I try to access my website using www i would like it to redirect to non www but instead it shows a sal error message.
On-Page Optimization | | Voopoo2 -
Duplicate H3, H4 or H5 Tags
I know that duplicate H1 and H2 tags are a red flag for Google, but does the same apply for H3, H4 and H5 tags? A lot of my products have the same H5 tags and I'm wondering whether or not that is pulling down my keyword rank.
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
Is using hyphens in a URL to separate words good practice?
Hi guys, I have a client who wants to use a hyphen to separate two words in the URL to make each work stand out. Is is good or bad practice to use a hyphen in a URL and will it affect rankings? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
Title tag length
Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and have just noticed the end of my title text has been cut off by Google in the serps results. Everything i have read tells me titles should be maximum of 70 characters, however, Google is only displaying 54. See below Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police... Nobody else on the page is showing more than 54 characters. Am i missing something obvious? Any and all help gratefully appreciated. Thanks Si
On-Page Optimization | | DaddySmurf0 -
Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks
On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
Impact of removing category sidebar with keywords?
Our site (a niche financial publication: insideARM.com) requires some more room in the sidebar. We're considering removing the categories (we call them topics) sidebar block, or cutting down the number of items displayed within it. My concern is that we'd be removing a direct link to landing pages for important keyword terms from our most powerful page (the index). Sure, we have the terms listed in the footer, but I am worried that the position change will lower the value of the links. Our users don't really use these links for navigational purposes, which is why it comes up as a potential removed item. Am I wrong to worry about this? Would we be crippling our category pages by doing this?
On-Page Optimization | | insideARM0