Isnt it better to have headlines in H1 and H2 tags instead of p tags?
-
I am working with a simple site http://http://lightsigns.com/Uniko_Manufacturing_Limited.html
They seek more SEO traffic. However, the two big headlines that read "Wholesale Supply to the Sign and Display Industries" which is on line 241 and 242 of the source code, its in a p tag, i.e.
<p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Wholesale Supply to the
and
<p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-bottom: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Sign and Display Industries
Likewise, the product titles are in p tags, also. For example, on the Slide-in Light Box product page, http://lightsigns.com/Slide_In_light_box.html , I have done keyword research and no one is using the words slide in light box.Plus, it is also a p tag, ie. line 43 reads
style="padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style">Slide-in Light Box
If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO-optimized keywords such as Display Light Box - Slide-In LIght Box, would this indeed help SEO?
In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?
-
I would agree that H1s are stronger than
tags for SEO, but they're still pretty minor on-page indications.
Of much greater impact would be to better-optimize the meta-title for the page, which is one of the strongest on-page SEO factors. Right now it's just the company name "Uniko Manufacturing Limited" Much better would be "Uniko Manufacturing Limited - Wholesale Sign and Display Industry Supply" or something similar.
Also, the page has no meta-description, which could severely handicap it when it does appear in search results. The meta-description does not help with ranking, but it's like a mini-ad for the page right in the search results to all ow you try to convince a searcher to click on your page instead of someone else's.
Better to focus on the highest impact optimizations first, rather than just the easiest.
Hope that makes sense?
Paul
-
"If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO..."
H1's carry a little more weight than H2's, so I'd suggest using an H1 if you can. Ian implied that, but he didn't outright say it
Also, the page you have listed has capital letters in it, which isn't ideal, but it's still fine. However, the lower case version does 404. So, any links that are sent to the lower case version will not result in you getting link juice to the page. I'd suggest using a 301 redirect from the lower case version to the upper case one that you have listed.
lower case version:
-
"In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?"
Absolutely. These tags are strong signals to search engines as to what the page is about, along with title tags and meta descriptions. You can prioritize content and break down the page with H1 through H6 headline tags. SEOmoz has a great on-page best practice guide for setting up the page, which makes sense for your users as well as search engines. Try not to spam keywords anywhere, just make sure it is "keyword friednly" but at the same time readable and would make sense to a human.
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
-
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Duplicate Title Tags How harmful is it?
I recently updated a site to use a new WordPress theme. This theme in conjunction with Yoast SEO plugin is causing duplicate Title tags. The tags have the same title in them. I discovered this when adding new keywords and pages to the page optimizer in moz. I have since turned off moz to stop the duplicate title tag issue however I am wondering if tuning off yoast is worse then the duplicate title tags. Any clarification on the duplicate page title issue and its consequences would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
Duplicate content issue with Wordpress tags?
Would Google really discount duplicate content created by Wordpress tags? I find it hard to believe considering tags are on and indexed by default and the vast majority of users would not know to deindex them . . .
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Whitespace INSIDE # tag harmful?
Hi, I understand that 'whitespace' in source code is absolutely fine and is stripped out. For example the following code is fine: Red Apples some text However, how is whitespace interpreted INSIDE html tags such as H1's? My Dev team have instructions to add H1's to a page, however they have done so like this: Red Apples (37 characters long) rather than this: Red Apples (10 characters long) Do you think this extra space will be harmful? The browser renders it fine, however if you use something like the mozbar plugin is shows the H1 length as 37 characters. I know the 10 character H1 is 100% relevant to the search term "Red Apples", however is the 37 character H1 only 27% relevant? (10/37) I've made the request to the Dev team to remove this whitespace because I'd rather err on the side of caution, but its been knocked back because the HTML spec specifies consecutive white-space should be interpreted as a single space and all browsers build the DOM by trimming a tags value - and they imagine search bots do the same so don't want to mess with the compiler. Anyone have experience of this? I've never had whitespace in a H1 before so don't know. Happy to leave the whitespace in if it's not going to be an issue. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | FashionLux0 -
How do I fix the h1 tag?
No More Than One H1 Tag Easy fix <dl> <dt>Number of H1s</dt> <dd>2</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Best practices for both SEO and accessibility require only a single H1 tag. The H1 is meant to be the page's headline, and thus, multiple H1s are confusing. Consider employing H2, H3 or CSS styles to achieve the same results with text visualization.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove multiple instances of the H1 tag, so that only one exists on the page.</dd> <dd>I get this error yet it does not tell me how to fix it. I'm not even sure what the H1 tag is?
Technical SEO | | 678648631264
</dd> </dl>0 -
Can the Breadcrumb Trail be used as the H1 tag?
We hace recently discovered that the x-cart sites we have dont have H1 tags. Can the breadcrumb trail on the category and sub category pages be used as the H1 tag?
Technical SEO | | heathshowman0 -
Using a canonical tag to eliminate ID variables?
My research on seomoz has resulted in conflicting ideas regarding the canonical tag. One article says avoid it, the other says embrace it. We have fixed a majority of our architecture problems using redirects for duplicate content, however, when we send out newsletters we still have these pesky tracking ids. I figured out how to remove them from analytics, but am unsure of how this affects our SEO. An example of one of our links is: https://www.quicklearn.com/transcript/?utm_source=news101011&utm_medium=e&utm_campaign=newclass&nlid=news101011&UID=2287 The original url being www.quicklearn.com/transcript/ the custom (non-Google) variables being nlid and uid. Is this a problem? Do I need rel cononical tags on each and every page?
Technical SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0