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.
Is using a subheading to introduce a section before the main heading bad for SEO?
-
I have noticed a popular trend in web design which involves sections of content being started with what looks to be smaller sub heading something like
<h3>,<h4>or<h5>and then followed by a bigger heading<h2>.My question is, what is the best way to deal with this visual structure and will having a structure like this hurt your SEO?
<h5>Contact Us</h5> <h2>Get started with your next project in minutes!<h2> <p>Some text here ...</p>Here are some examples where the header structure is similar to above (smaller before bigger):
If that structure is bad for SEO, then it seems like a simple solution is to make it purely visual, mimicking a sub header with styling on a span or paragraph like these sites do:
- https://www.andrejilderda.nl/
- https://nightwatch.io/
- https://www.swingvy.com/
- https://www.figma.com/
My only concern with that approach is because your section sub heading is no longer an actual header you will miss out on ranking important and relevant keyword information for that section. Is this correct something to be worried about?
There is one last solution I stumbled upon that involves using headings for both but in reverse hierarchy so a
<h3>is first but styled to be smaller, followed by a visually bigger<h4>which provides the addition context.Anyone have thoughts, expertise or resources on the matter?
-
You will also find that you fail some accessibility standards (WCAG) if your heading structure tags are out of sequence. As GPainter pointed out, you really want to avoid styling your heading structure tags explicitly in your CSS if you want to be able to to style them differently in different usage scenarios.
Of course, for your pre-headings, you can just omit the structure tag entirely. You don't need all your important keywords to be contained in structure tags.
You'll want, ideally, just one H1 tag on the page and your most important keyword (or semantically related keywords) in that tag. If you can organize the structure of your page with lower-level heading tags after that, great. It does help accessibility too, just note that you shouldn't break the hierarchy by going out of sequence. But it's not a necessity to have multiple levels of heading tags after the h1.
-
Hello there,
Thee way i recommend doing is the next one.
H1 (one per page)
H2 (Name of the section, for example How to improve SEO)
H3 (Linkbuilding . it connects to the H2 of "how to improve SEO")
H3 (Blog post. it connects to the H2 too)
H3(Guest posting)and so on... Never never use more than an H1 on the same page and don't overused H2 as well.
I hope it's clear, let me know if i can help youy with something else.
-
Hey there, The best way (and the way I look at it) is like a book. The title of your page is the title, then from there you have chapters (H1) then perhaps sub-chapters (h2) and so forth. Each is relevant in how it breaks down but also wouldn't work the other way around so much.
Some developers are a tad lazy and they will code the size of an h tag so when creating the page instead of actually coding it to match a design they may well use the h tags to help as it 'looks' right but then you may be internally screaming at the way it works over the look. Welcome to SEO where you may be stuck between design and development!
H1 is 'meant to be more powerful and shouldn't be overused on a page as per the chapter guide I said use it sparingly but with more things SEO there is no golden rule and it's all little tweaks. Overall I wouldn't say its 'bad' just not 'optimized'.
Hope that helps or at least gives you something to think about.
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
-
I need help in doing Local SEO
Hey guys I hope everyone is doing well. I am new to SEO world and I want to do local SEO for one of my clients. The issue is I do not know how to do Local SEO at all or where to even start. I would appreciate it if anyone could help me or give me an article or a course to learn how to do it. Main question The thing that I want to do is that, I want my website to show up in top 3 google map results for different locations(which there is one actual location). For example I want to show up for
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopack.org.ofici3
online clothing store in new york
online clothing store in los angeles or... Let's assume that we can ship our product to every other cities. So I hope I could deliver what I mean. I'd appreciate it if you could answer me with practical solutions.0 -
SEO on dynamic website
Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic0 -
Revolution Sliders - Still considered bad for SEO in 2018?
Hi guys, I have a question about revolution sliders. Are they generally speaking still technically considered to be bad for SEO? I've done some research on this topic however most of the information I can find dates back to around 2009-2012, when sliders were mostly java and flash based. It seems that back then they were considered to be bad for SEO. Is this still the case? We use revolution sliders because it's easy for us to overlay text and because it scales to mobile automatically. It also allows us to put alt texts and image titles in there - we don't use them for the purpose of sliding images. Would there be any technical reason why a slider would be considered bad for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rswhtn0 -
SEO time
I wanto to be in the top of the google search. I am usiing a lot of SEO tools but... I have done it during one month. Do I have to wait more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana0 -
Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?
Hello SEO experts! We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MLTGroup0 -
Is Using a Question, Answer Format Appropriate for a Blog? Is a 300 Word Micro Blog An SEO Plus?
My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words. My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts. The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows: 1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s). I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices? 2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links. Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage). 3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format? The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings. Thanks in advance for your feedback!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Headings H1, H2, H3
Hi I'm tidying up my site and had a few questions ref: use of headings. 1. My previous SEO company use to reduce the font size for headings, this seems a bit black hat to me ? Is this okay? For example heading text as font 6 and paragraph text as font 12. 2. If my key search term is 'driving lessons in London' and my second key search term is 'Driving Schools London', Is it better to have my H1 as: Driving Lessons London & H2 as: Driving Schools London OR H1: Quality Driving Lessons in London by driveJohnson's H2: How our driving school in London can help you: In my opinion the 2nd one reads better and i notice other companies doing it the second way, the first way i mentioned seems a bit old school and doesn't read well ? 3. Is it worth using H3 & H4 ? Can you use H2 more than once ? 4. Lastly could i have two key search terms within one heading, as long as the paragraph underneath is about the heading. For example: H1: Our driving school in London offers cheap driving lessons The two keywords search phrases here for me would be driving schools London and driving lessons london. If someone could get back to me, i would be very grateful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anthony19820 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1