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.
Hiding h1 tags in Magento
-
Hi Moz Community,
I know that hiding h1 tags isn't a good practice for SEO and google, but we have banners that look much nicer than the stock text Magento uses for its titles.
The banners have the same text and the h1 is in the source code, just not visible on front end. The option Magento gives is "hide title on the page." So I'm not sure if this is actually the bad way to hide it or if it's fine for search engines.
Thanks,
-Reed -
My view is a little bit different, but to be 100% I would have to look at the site. If the application / module is using style="display:none" to hide the tag, I would not use it. The reason being is that multiple h1 tags on a page dilute or in some peoples opinion cancel out other h1 tags. There are valid reasons to hide h1 tags, like when you are doing fade ins or have a slider with it in there. So I am of the opinion that even if it is hidden Google will pick up on it. So you do run the chance of being caught for keyword stuff or it could cancel out your h1 tag that is displaying. (As far as I know there is no clear 100% information on how Google handles multiple h1 tags. I have heard all sorts of things including it registers the first one seen in code, it registers the last one seen in code, it combines the weight given to all of the h1 tags, and even that they don't matter it is text size above the fold that matters)
If it were me this is what I would do. I would remove the text from the banners and use the built in functionality for the text. Depending on the location of them on the page really depends on how I would tag them, they could be h2, h3, span, ect. But I would opt for on page visible text over using a graphic with text. I realize that you do not like the style that it uses, but it is just a style that can usually be mimic'd with a style sheet. The reason I usually opt not to use text on banners is twofold. It cannot be translated and it cannot be searched.
-
Hi Jeff,
Exactly what I was looking for. I don't think we'd need to change the way titles are displayed, just wanted to be sure it wouldn't count it as duplicate or see it as a keyword hiding technique.
Thanks for your help
-
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for your response, really helpful.
Cheers.
-
Reed - You should be fine to use the "hide" function in Magento to not have the duplicate
tags show up on the site. If you want to jump into the code a bit more, you can likely change the way that the titles are displayed, but this might be a deeper dive into the design layer of Magento.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
-
h1 tags are useful, but are not needed by Google, as they will crawl the page to see the content. However if you have h2 h3 etc tags, but don't have an h1 then crawls will not read any tag at all, as they must be present, completed and sequential.
Hope that helps
Bruce
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
-
Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document
Error: Missing Canonical Tag
Technical SEO | | ahmadmdahshan
But URL is not a webpage it is a PDF document, is this fixable?0 -
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
How do I customize Magento product urls?
I would like my product urls to be /category/manufacturer/name/part#. This would be the only url the item uses and how the product is accessed. It would also be used for product feeds. My first attempt was to use https://amasty.com/magento-unique-product-url.html This creates a single url but I can not customize it. Sometimes it selects the manufacturer and sometimes the category. My second attempt was with https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/custom-product-urls-seo.html I have it installed but it doesn't change the urls. Has anyone been able to do this successfully?
Technical SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Is alt text inside an img tag inside an h1 the same weight as text directly inside the h1?
Right now I use a background image and CSS to tie the h1 tag to my logo on each page. However, I am concerned that may not be best practice. Plus, I am interested in using schema markup on my logo. So, my question is, if I use an image with alt text inside my h1 tag, will the alt text carry as much weight as a text-based h1?
Technical SEO | | Avalara0 -
Is it ok to use H1 tags in breadcrumbs?
A client has an e-commerce site and she doesn't want a page title on the products page. She has breadcrumbs though. Her website developer suggests putting the H1 on the breadcrumbs. So: products> Gifts > picture frame with h1 tags round the word "picture frame". Is this ok to do? Or is it a bad thing for SEO purposes? Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
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 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
Should I include tags in sitemap?
Hello All, I was wondering if you should include tags and categories in your sitemap. In the past on previous blogs I have always left tags and categories out. The reason for this is a good friend of mine who has been doing SEO for a long time and inhouse always told me that this would result in duplicate content. I thought that it would be a great idea to get some input from the SEOmoz community as this obviously has a big affect on your blog and the number of pages indexed. Any help would be great. Thanks, Luke Hutchinson.
Technical SEO | | LukeHutchinson1