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.
Other tags inside an H1 tag
-
So I have a situation with the website I'm currently redesigning where the H1 titles are supposed to mix colors per the current brand strategy.
The branding crew is adamant that this has to be done so there is no use in saying "just don't do it".
To accomplish this I'm wrapping the words that need to be the other color in a .
Additionally, some pages have a "sub text" as part of the title, floated to the right and in a smaller font but with the same multi color treatment. I'm wondering if the sub text should be in an H2 and positioned to the right or if it would be beneficial to have the text in the H1 as well.
An example of what I'm talking about would be something like this: "Big Shoes for Big Guys - Nike Shoes"
In that, the "Big Shoes" and "Nike" would be one color and the "for Big Guys" and "Shoes" would be another. I can imagine having the "Nike Shoes" as part of the H1 would be a good idea in some respect but I'm not certain of that.
In order to make that happen I can only think of one way to do it:
-H1-
Big Shoes
-span- for Big Guys -/span-
-div- Nike
-span- Shoes -/span-
-/div-
-/H1-So that brings me back to the original concern, do search engines care about tags inside the H1?
The only other way to accomplish the color changes that I can think of would be to have a fairly large chunk of javascript setup to go through H1's to colorize them using the span tags. That is unless GoogleBot has started to execute javascript while crawling the sites now...
-
I tend to use this quite a lot; It does not harm Search Engines, what is important is that only inline elements are contained within an H1 tag, that is
span
is a perfectly valid element, however adiv
is not. In your case you should use multiple spans with separate class names.You should also consider splitting it into H1 / H2 depending on your site structure and navigation as it might make more sense in some cases.
-
It's fine to include tags withing an
, but including awithin an
goes against HTML conventions.
-
To answer your question, a span tag within a H1 tag will not have any negative effect, its quite normal to use markup to add visualize appearance, and a span tag is not "semantic" markup.
Once you are not splitting up the word, as is using
Nike
, I have read that the robots would read that as N "space" ike ... hence not the word nike
BTW, thats a very crude and unsemanctic way to style that phrase, why the div within the H1 tag
I would use a below, without having the benefit of seeing your website layout of course
Big Shoes for Big Guys
Nike Shoes
Then add your markup and styling within the the classes
If you need anymore help with the styling, give me a shout
Regards
John
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
-
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Auto - update of h1 to h2
Hi, I have recently inherited an ecommerce website and been tasked with improving SEO. I noticed a lot of pages were using several h1 tags and, with the help of my developer, used the css to overwrite the secondary headings as h2 tags. However, since doing so many of the pages have fallen 15-40 places in the SERPS. The h1 / h2 switch was the only update. Can anyone suggest why the pages would have fallen like this, and if it is a temporary measure likely to recover in time? Thanks to anyone in advance for your help...
Web Design | | DavidIainJeffrey0 -
Magento Category H1 Tags
I am currently using magento and have all titles labeled correctly. I have made a H1 tag for the main page which works fine. Each product title becomes and H1 tag, which again is fine. However my category pages are missing H1 tags. If I manually code an H1 tag, then there becomes 2 H1 tags. It is using my category name then my manual H1 tag. I don't want it to use my category name because it is shortened to fit on my navigation bar.
Web Design | | nchachula
Ex. www.mydomain.com/tshirts/short-sleeve
In this example the subcategory title is short sleeve. When using MOZ tool on frontend it shows NO H1 tag or the title becomes H1 tag "short sleeve" however I want the H1 to actually be "short sleeve tshirts"
If I manually add an H1 tag to description on category page it adds both the title AND the H1 tag I enter.0 -
Spaces at beginning of title tag - negatively affect the optimization of the page?
For some reason, our title tags have a long space after the beginning title tag and before the text appears. The beginning title tag is on one line, then a break, a tab and then the content of the title tag. I'm pretty sure this is not good and is affecting optimization of the page. Am I correct or is this not an issue and does not need to be fixed? Example: | <title></span></p> <p> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="line-number"> </td> <td class="line-content"> First keyword</td> </tr> </tbody> </table></title> |
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Wordpress - redirecting tags
I just ran a webmaster tool from Yoast SEO premium and notice I have a lot of problems with tags (restricted-robots-txt) For example : http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/wedding-group-photo/ Do I have to redirect to http://www.soobumimphotography.com/wedding-group-photo/ Should I do this to each and every posts Thank you
Web Design | | soobumim0 -
Using H1 in a carousel
Hi, I have a homepage with a carousel rotator that has text in it. My question is what's the best practice in using H1 tags within the carousel. Will placing H1 tags in each be considered excessive H1 use and if so can this still cause SEO problems? Thank you
Web Design | | mirel0 -
Script tags and seo
Hi, I have a page on my site with a google map embed, and a path drawn on the map. The path is made from a long string of coordinates. For ease I have the co-ordinates placed in a script tag at the foot of the page, amongst my javascript My question is, will this script tag hurt the seo for the page? I've read that inline js and 'data islands' can be bad, so I've been careful to keep it out of the main body of the page. Thanks, any help appreciated!
Web Design | | madegood0 -
Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?
If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?
Web Design | | jaychow0