Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?
-
Will skipping <H> tags on a page have any impact on your SEO, e.g. skipping a <H2> so your page has a <H1> and then goes to a <H3>?
Obviously a page must have a <H1>, but does it matter if you skip other headings?
-
I recommend you read this content about title tags. English Content - Türkçe SEO'da başlık etiketleri I hope you benefit from it.
-
In general, well-arranged <H> tags suggest that Google bots will better understand the subject of the page, but quite often I come across websites with missing tags on the first page.
-
It is a content issue. I have worked a lot with H2 and H3 headlines and see many SERP results with sitelinks with Headlines keywords. If you optimize a content with different parts and work with tables of contents, Google can recognize the structure understand your content and evaluate it. Some parts will be shown in the featured snippets as well or in FAQs. To say that they don't have any impact is wrong.
-
I think skipping <H> tags won't affect the ranking factor in SEO.
-
This depends on page structure and if you have any additional schema such as FAQs etc.
Additional keywords within your H2/3/4 tags can be extremely useful but again it depends on keywords you are targeting and how natural these headings actually are.
It's also worth thinking about the other purposes of H tags.
Even though they may or may not have an affect on SEO - H tags help with accessibility software such as screen readers to make sense of your content.
-
Thank you @Tom-Capper and @pau4ner, this is really helpful. I guess it used to have an impact on SEO but things have changed and they're no longer as important as they were.
-
In my experience and opinion, it won't have any impact at all. I've ranked pages with one H1, a bunch of H3 and no H2. Headlines are useful to organize content for users, they don't really have direct SEO purposes (although they can affect it indirectly, as a better organized content will improve user satisfaction).
Although not a headline, something I would never skip is <title> tag (even though Google can create one/rewrite the existing one).
-
From an SEO perspective, I doubt you'd see any material impact.
Even skipping the <H1> isn't awful as long as the document's overall structure and hierarchy remains clear. See this experiment we ran a while back - https://moz.com/blog/h1-seo-experiment
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
-
What Tools Should I Use To Investigate Damage to my website
I would like to know what tools I should use and how to investigate damage to my website in2town.co.uk I hired a person to do some work to my website but they damaged it. That person was on a freelance platform and was removed because of all the complaints made about them. They also put in backdoors on websites including mine and added content. I also had a second problem where my content was being stolen. My site always did well and had lots of keywords in the top five and ten, but now they are not even in the top 200. This happened in January and feb. When I write unique articles, they are not showing in Google and need to find what the problem is and how to fix it. Can anyone please help
Technical SEO | | blogwoman10 -
How to stop /tag creating duplicate content - Wordpress
Hi, I keep getting alert for duplicate content. It seems Wordpress is creating it through a /tag https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/cipr/ https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/pr-agencies/ Something in the way we've got Wordpress set up?
Technical SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
Breadcrumbs on Mobile How important are they for SEO?
Due to Poor unsightly look of breadcrumbs and the space it takes up above the fold we only employ breadcrumbs on our desktop version. Breadcrumbs are hidden from view on mobile version. However as mobile first indexing is now in play what technical SEO impacts will this have? one thing that comes to mind is crawling deeper pages where breadcrumbs made them accessible in less than 3 link clicks? But i am unsure now of the impacts of not having breadcrumbs visible for mobile version of our site.
Technical SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Brand page meta tag
I have around 100 brands on my website (with 100 different pages.) Please suggest me best way to create meta tags for all brand pages.
Technical SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Meta description tag problems according to an seo tool
hi, my site is www.in2town.co.uk I am using an seo tool to check on my site and how to improve the seo. The tool is here. http://www.juxseo.com/report/view/51ebf9deab900 for some reason it has brought up errors, it claims i have not got a meta description even though i have and have doubled checked in my source code the errors it has brought up is as follows, and i would like to know if this is a fault of the seo tool or am i doing something wrong Does the description tag exist?0/1 <a id="sub_toggle_12" class="sub_toggle contract_sub"></a>Hide Info Description Tag: Explanation: The meta description tag does not help your rankings but it is your opportunity to encourage prospects to click. The meta description should describe the content of your web page, include a strong call to action, and include your keyword. Action: Make sure you are using the meta description tag. It is found in the section of your page. checkboxIs there only one description tag?0/2<a id="sub_toggle_13" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More InfocheckboxIs your description less than 156 characters?0/1<a id="sub_toggle_14" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More InfocheckboxIs your keyword in the description tag?0/3 <a id="sub_toggle_15" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More Info it also says about the canocial tag which it claims i have more than one Is the canonical tag optmized? Is there only one canonical tag?0/4 <a id="sub_toggle_10" class="sub_toggle contract_sub"></a>Hide Info Explanation: You only need one of these to direct a search engine. Don't muddy the waters. Action: Make sure you only have one canonical tag. This only applies if you use the canonical tag. any help and advice would be greatregards
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
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 -
Help with duplicate title tags.
Hi Just going through Seomoz crawl diagnostics for one of my clients sites & see that the title tags for over 2,000 pages are the same due to the way there site software generates the titles using php, examples : **home page** = <title>Home - Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discounttitle> other page = <title>A0 Frames - Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discounttitle> So as you can see the page titles have the page name given to the beginning of the title which is fine as they have the keyword, then the text : Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discount Now if i take out the text : Trade prices,Next Day Delivery,Bulk Discount the home page is going to have just the word Home which is rubbish & the other pages will have the keyword which is better but not great, just wondered if any one has a better solution?.
Technical SEO | | askshopper0