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...
-
Ah ok, so generally I wouldn't suggest making any forced H1, H2 changes through php. Because, now all of your H1s will be affected (if I'm reading this right), which you don't want to happen.
Also if your issue before was having multiple H1 tags before, you'll now have multiple H2's. What CMS are you working in? Did you have multiple H1s before due to styling reasons (ex. Wordpress)?
If the header font style is what you were bothered with, modifying the css to reflect similarity across headers would work great. Then use the headers as you normally would.
Lastly, this should not affect your rankings that dramatically. I would look at your website analysis, backlink profile and see if any big on-site content changes were made.
-Hope this helps-
-
Hi Britney, thanks for for response on this.
This all gets quite complicated for my 'non-developer brain' but I'll try to explain how we've done it...
A .php file was used to define the structure of the product listings on our brand pages, so rather than amend every page my developer inserted some code, using a new class to overwrite some of the the h2 tags:
if(isset($modlet->h1)){?>
expandText($modlet->h1);?>
and replicated the h1 style for this class in the styles.css document.
I've checked the source as rendered in a browser and where the h1 tag should be the h2 tag appears, as expected.
Thank you for the suggestions, I'll look into these and let you know how I get on.
-
Agree with Matt, this drastic of a swing isn't likely due to changing your H1, H2s in CSS.
Can you please clarify "used the css to overwrite the secondary headings as h2 tags." ?
Lots of people use multiple H1s or H2s on a page due to formatting reasons. They like the way all of the H2s look (font size, weight, font, etc.) but the best way to go about this is to make custom CSS changes that modify ALL Header tags to look the same. This way you can use proper H1, H2, H3, H4, etc. and it won't look like a wonky cascading sub-title issue.
Some things to check regarding your ranking:
1. Google Search Console for server & index issues
2. Dropped 301s
3. New spammy backlinks
4. Any search console warnings
-
You know, what—I looked into this a bit more, and you actually might be right about what caused this. Let me get you some more help.
-
Hi Matt, thanks for your response.
I've not carried out any competitor analysis on this, what sort of thing should I be looking for?
-
That strikes me as a pretty massive change in rankings for a simple on-page change. Even a site-wide one, like that. Have you run any analysis on your competitors to see if anything they did might be to blame?
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
-
Multiple H1 Tags for different section on one webpage in HTML5 Website? Should I have only one?
https://www.tcs.com website has multiple H1 tag on around 40 out of 1000 pages. Webpage has different section and each section is important that's why used multiple H1 tag (one h1 for each section) **I understand, google will not penalize for multiple H1. But having multiple H1, for site like tcs, is it good or should use only one H1 tag? **Pls check https://www.tcs.com to see heading tag(6 heading tag used).
Web Design | | JayprakashSEO0 -
Is placing an H1 tag below a slideshow a bad practice?
Hello All, It is to my understanding that it is a best practice to have a single H1 headline that corresponds to your title tag at the top of your page, above your content for the best On-Site Optimization. We are developing a site that uses a big slideshow with text on each slide, and are concerned that placing the H1 Headline below this will be a bad practice. Would a better option be to have the slide show text on the image and place no alt tags on the slides, so that the crawlers accessing the page overlook this and see the H1 below the slider first? We need to maintain the slider for design purposes, but would like the site to optimized. A similar example to what the slider will look like is as follows: http://www.boviskyle.com/ However, we look to have optimized, "10x" content below the slider with a solid H1 headline as well. Thank You!
Web Design | | Armen-SEO0 -
Dealing with the impending Google mobile compliance update - is bMobilized any good as a temporary measure?
We've been caught a bit off guard with the upcoming Google mobile compliance issue and received the warnings in webmasters about fixing mobile usability issues. It will still be some time before we can have the site re-coded as responsive. I have stumbled upon a converter tool (which turns any site into one that's mobile friendly) called bMobilized, which essentially turns your site into one that's mobile friendly. Have you used bMobilized? Is it a safe idea to use this service temporarily until our new responsive site is ready in a few months? Do you have any suggestions for temporarily getting around the mobile compliance issue while our new responsive site is being built? Thanks
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Rich snippets tool/ schemer.org update?
We have a domain in the netherlands that shows stars (rich snippets) in adwords and in the organic search results. As we do the the in rich snippets test tool we see some errors as shown in the attachments, the errors are shown in review aggregate - but stars are stil shown in paid and organic search. Do we need to follow-up these errors? Do they influence ranking - or the stars in the near future? Z0fCKRW
Web Design | | remkoallertz1 -
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 -
Will updating our site from ASP .NET 3.5 to ASP .NET 4.0 negatively affect SEO?
I've checked out some of the other posts related to .NET upgrades, but none specifically address ASP .NET 4.0. I understand that there are many advantages to upgrading, but as with any change made to site code I want to be 110% positive that this upgrade will not affect how Google ranks my client's pages. Since the URL extension isn't changing (will remain .aspx), I'm thinking that there won't be much of an affect on SEO at all. In fact, I'm making the argument that the upgrade will only improve page rank. Anyone go through this upgrade and experience any immediate benefits or disadvantages? Thanks for your help!
Web Design | | FreightTEK0 -
Using H1 Headings - More than 1?
I've known about avoiding the use of more than 1 H1 Heading Tags, however, with HTML5 is this going to change... at least that's how I understand it. According to HTML5 Specs, Each 'section' can have an H1 heading, which at least theoretically means certain web pages that have multiple "sectioning elements" can have more than 1 H1 heading... true? False? What I'm looking for here is some insight into the ramifications HTML5 will have on the use of H1 tags. And would like to know how search engines currently handle this and are they anticipated to change as the HTML5 outline algorithm becomes widely supported? thanks in advance Kelly
Web Design | | KellysTutorials0 -
Auto-Generated META tag on 404 Page
I'm currently creating a 404 error page for my site and I noticed that a similar site uses some sort of code to automatically generate a meta title. Is this useful? For instance type in electrolux.com/john This page does not exist but in the title you'll see John | Electrolux How can i do this on my site?
Web Design | | evacuumstoreSEO0