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.
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
-
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/
Can anyone weigh in on this?
-
Thanks, Alan. That helps!
-
having the clearer understanding about the concept of having multiple "titles" on a single page (an H1 headline is the in-content "title" for that page), David is correct - while HTML 5 allows multiple H1 tags on a single page, this is bad because the H1 communicates "this is the primary topical focus of this unique page".
Because of that, if you have headlines within the content area for content elsewhere on the site, and link to that other content, then those are absolutely best served with H2 headline tags, or if not , then at the very least, "strong" tags if the topic of each target page is significantly different than the primary topic of the page they're all listed on.
-
Thanks Umar. Article titles (on the article page) should absolutely be h1. My question is specific to article titles on the home page or any category page where there are several articles listed. In that case is
better or ?
-
It is not recommended to have more than 1
tag on a page so using
tags as your article titles might cause an SEO issue when they display on your home page.
Depends on how the site is coded to work but I would say its safer to have the titles as
tags if you are displaying them all on one page and then when the user clicks through to the article it should have a
tag.
-
Hey Kael,
I won't recommend skipping H1/H2 tags for **. These tags have specific purposes and they should be use accordingly. Having H1 as the page/post title shows that what your page will about so it's better to use them.
As for the http://www.muscleandfitness.com, even they are using the H1 in post titles. For example, check out this link:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/athletes-celebrities/news/jon-stewart-host-2015-summerslam I am not sure in which context your consultant recommended this but I'd love to know the impact of this if he has adopted this approach in past.Hope this helps!
P.S:Sorry for Summer Slam link, I'm a huge WWE fan and can't wait for this Sunday
Umar**
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
-
Near Duplicate Title Tag Checker
Hi Everyone, I know there are a lot of tools like Siteliner, which can check the uniqueness of body copy, but are there any that can restrict the check to the title tags alone? Alternatively, is there an Excel or Google Sheets function that would allow me to do the same thing? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage
We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY. While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers. But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches. So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations. This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations. I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself. I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg30 -
How to remove skip links, main navigation, sidebars as h2 tags in wordpress genesis
Our website CMS is wordpress. Due to the Genesis Framework; below 4 phrases tuned into h2 tags: Skip links, Header Right, Main navigation and Footer. How to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation
Hey, all. I have client that uses tags in the navigation for its blog. For example, tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc. This is handled through their WordPress theme. This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether tags are semantically appropriate. Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple tags, would it be more appropriate to use tags for this menu navigation? Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our tags by using them for menu navigation? The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag. Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask44435230 -
Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
Hello, We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago). So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present. Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it? Thanks in advance for your help. Tej Luchmun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
Should you include domain / brand in Meta Title
Hello, I am trying to come up with a strategy for creating meta title information for my eCommerce store. I have read mixed reviews on the examples below. The first includes the company / brand in the meta title and thus is included in SE results. The second does not. Probably not a 'right' answer here so I look forward to answers with rationale... also open to a completely difference strategy all together! 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - $Company_Name OR 1MR Vortex by BPI Sports - Pre Workout Supplement Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 6thirty0 -
Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?
A customer of ours has a website in Belgium. There two main languages in Belgium: Dutch and French.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox
At first there was only a Dutch version with a .be extension. Right now they are implementing the French Belgium version on the URL website.be/fr. All of the content and comments will be translated. Also the URL’s will change from Dutch to French, so you've got two URL’s with the same content but in another language. Question: Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country? I think Google will understand this is just for the usability for a Multilanguage country. What do you guys think???0
