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.
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
-
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25
and
tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great.
Chris.K
-
I agree with Federico, the styling should be fixed through CSS and probably before you start doing any other work. Making these changes really shouldn't take that long.
Since the site owner is wanting SEO done for his site, he/she would probably listen to your advice on getting the site cleaned up as soon as possible. Just state the issue and let them know that this problem is potentially costing them money.
-
Chris, I have a normal practice not to start with off-page optimization when on-page is not really fixed and this is because if the on-page is not fixed you cannot taste the real power of links...
This is common that the header tags are set with CSS as many websites do this from time to time...i think what you should do is to communicate the issue with the client and tell them how important it is to fix this problem as soon as possible.
-
Hi Chris,
It's been proven that the main issue with h1 and h2 tags is that people uses them everywhere within the design, while there's a reason for the 1, 2, 3, etc. h2 is used to denote your primary heading, h3 to denote your h2, and so on.
You could change the other h1, h2 (that are less important) and use h3 and h4 accordingly by styling the h3 and h4 in the CSS.
The only bad thing to do there would be to hide (display:none) any of the headings.
Hope that helps!
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
-
When Google rewrites a title tag, do you get the SEO impact for the original version?
Let's say you're writing a homepage title tag like this: KEYWORD | BRAND and Google rewrites it as BRAND | KEYWORD From Moz and best practices, we believe that keywords closer to the beginning of a title tag may have more impact on search rankings. So, when Google rewrites the title tag, do you get the impact you would have made with the keyword being closer to the front? Or, does Google give you the impact you would have received with the keyword being at the end?
On-Page Optimization | | Kevin_P0 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
Should I use an acronym in my URL?
I know that Google understands various acronyms. Example: If I search for CRM System, it knows i'm searching for a customer relationship management system. However, will it recognize less known acronyms? I have a page geared specifically for SAP data archiving for human capital management systems. For those in the industry, they simply call it HCM. Here is how I view my options: Option #1: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/human-capital-management Option #2: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/hcm Option #3: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/hcm-human-capital-management With option #3, i'm capturing the acronym AND the full phrase. This doesn't make my URL overly long either. Of course, in my content i'll reference both. What does everyone else think about the URL? -Alex
On-Page Optimization | | MeasureEverything0 -
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings." How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO0 -
Choosing a title tag in seo (H1 or H2 or H3)
I look many times on google that what is the best tag to set in title for seo, H1 or H2 or H3 In many forums and sites they are asking that you need to put only H2 tag in title and someone ask to put H1 in title and i am confused, Some body tell me the correct tag for seo in google, or any other search engine.
On-Page Optimization | | seom20140 -
Should you try to rank for misspelled keywords?
Hi there, 2 part question: Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result? E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality? The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland0 -
Title and Heading Tags
Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful. I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) ) Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long). So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have? In addition, any advice on setting optimum tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0 -
German SEO
Just a quickie, Does anybody know of any strong German SEO agencies? Many Thanks Sean
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0