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H1 and Schema Codes Set Up Correctly?
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Greetings:
It was pointed out to me that the h1 tags on my website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) all had exactly the same text and that duplication may be contributing to the very low page authority for most URLs.
The duplicate h1 appears in line 54-54 (see below) of the home page: www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:
itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" style="position:absolute;top:-9999em;">
<span<br>itemprop="name">Metro Manhattan Office Space</span<br>
<img< p="">But the above refers to schema" so is this really duplicate H1 or is there an exception if the H1 is within a schema?
Also, I was told that the company street address and city and state were set up incorrectly as part of an alt tag. However these items also appear as schema in lines 49-68 shown below:
Dangerous for me to perform surgery on the code without being certain about these key items!! Could ask my developer, however they may be uncomfortable considering that they set this up in the 1st place. So the view of neutral professionals would be highly welcome!
itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span<br>itemprop="streetAddress">347 5th Ave #1008
<span<br>itemprop="addressLocality">New York
<span<br>itemprop="addressRegion">NY
<span<br>itemprop="postalCode">10016<div<br>itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
---------------------------------------------------------------------------</div<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></img<> -
For suggestion 1, I should clarify that you already are using Microdata. Your Microdata is repeating what is already in the page, rather than "tagging" your existing content inline. Microdata is a good tool to use if you are able to tag pieces of content as you are communicating it to a human reader; it should follow the natural flow of what you are writing to be read by humans. This guide walks you through how Microdata can be implemented inline with your content, and it's worth reading through to see what's available and how to step forward with manual implementation of Schema.org with confidence.
Will these solutions remove the duplicate H1 tag?
Whatever CMS or system you are using to produce the hidden microdata markup needs to be changed to remove its attempt entirely. The markup of the content itself is good, but it needs to be combined in with existing content or implemented with JSON+LD so that it is not duplicating the HTML you are showing the user.
Are these options relatively simple for an experienced developer? Is one option superior to the other?
Both should be, but it depends on your strategy. Are you hand-rolling your schema.org markup? Is somebody going into your content and wrapping the appropriate content with the correct microdata? This can be a pain in the butt and time-consuming, especially if they're not tightly embedded with your content production team.
I downloaded the HTML and reviewed the Microdata implementation. I don't mean to sound unkind but it looks like computer-generated HTML and it's pretty difficult to read and manipulate without matching tags properly.
Is one option superior to the other?
Google can read either without issue; they recommend JSON+LD (source).
In your case, I'd also recommend JSON+LD because:
- Your investment in Microdata is not very heavy and appears easy enough to unwind
- The content you want to show users isn't exactly inline with the content you want read by crawlers anyway (for example, your address isn't on the page and visible to readers)
- It's simple enough to write by hand, and there exist myriad options to embed programmatically-generated schema.org content in JSON+LD format
Please review this snippet comparing a Microdata solution and a JSON+LD solution side by side.
PLEASE DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THIS INTO YOUR SITE. It is meant for educational and demonstrative purposes only.
There are comments inline that should explain what's going on: https://gist.github.com/TheDahv/dc38b0c310db7f27571c73110340e4ef
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Hi Again:
Will option #1 (keeping existing microdata) remove the duplicate h1 tag? Your suggestion listed below:
"So, wherever the
tag with the company name lives that is rendered and shown to the user, ad the "LocalBusiness" itemscope to the parent tag that surrounds it and its content. Basically you'd merge your Schema.org code with the user-facing content"
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Hi David:
Schema was added to the site discretely provide location data to Google.
You suggested 2 potential solutions:
1. Use Microdata...
2. Use JSON+LD..
Will these solutions remove the duplicate H1 tag?
We are concerned that the low rank of our URLs (80% are 1) are caused by duplicate H1s on each page.
Are these options relatively simple for an experienced developer? Is one option superior to the other?
Thanks for your patience in explaining these options, my programming understanding is limited.
Alan -
I see that you're using CSS to get that markup into the page, but definitely not visible to the user. Am I interpreting that right? If so, it seems like your goal is to get some Schema.org tags into the page to mark up your content as a LocalBusiness.
I have 2 ideas for you:
Use microdata (the markup format you're using now) to mark up your tags inline with your existing content. So, wherever the
tag with the company name lives that is rendered and shown to the user, ad the "LocalBusiness" itemscope to the parent tag that surrounds it and its content. Basically you'd merge your Schema.org code with the user-facing content
Use JSON+LD markup instead. You can get the same information "repeated" but the JSON+LD markup isn't rendered for users. jsonld.com has a great page with a template you can copy and adjust to suit your business. If you go this route, remove the microdata-laden HTML hidden off the page with the inline CSS and replace it with the JSON+LD wrapped in . Google also has some great documentation around the LocalBusiness type.
Hope that helps!
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