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.
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
-
Google not listing website correctly
have a domain that was unused for a while and displayed the "parked by Gandi" domain message. Recently, I decided to set up a fully working website on that domain, but I'm struggling to get it to rank correctly on Google. Google isn't updating the http://domain.com to the correct https://www.domain.com, and I have tried everything. The http://domain.com redirects to https://www.domain.com if you click on it. I managed to get the correct version, https://www.domain.com, to show up, but after a couple of days, it reverted to the old version and has stayed that way. This has been going on for a few weeks now. Additionally, I had an old version of the site using .com, and I forwarded that to the .co.uk, but the old .com will not be removed from Google. it was just one page without much content. At the moment, Google's search results look very messy and out of date. I have submitted the URL in the Google Search Console using the URL inspection tool and requested indexing and reindexing. I have also submitted sitemaps, but nothing is really working. Any ideas?
SEO Tactics | | Roycd0 -
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 -
Best SEO Structure For E-Commerce With Products Using Multiple Categories
Hi all, I am in the process of re-structuring my e-commerce website for better SEO and user experience. I have done some keyword research and would like some advice on how best to structure my site around those keywords. For example, my site (All Things Nature) sells a brand of wooden sculptures (Woodsculp) and I would like to rank for keywords related to that brand, the brand by animal, the brand by collection and the brand by release date.
Content Development | | nb2e4fg
Examples of keywords could be: Brand by Animal: Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Cats, Woodsculp Elephants
Brand by Collection: Woodsculp Pets, Woodsculp Safari
Brand by Release Date: Woodsculp Christmas 2023, Woodsculp Summer 2022 I would create each of these keywords as a category so that they can be found by a search engine and by users. I would then structure as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Pets
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Summer 2022 The only problem with this structure is it would take more than 3 clicks (4) for the user to reach a product. How critical is this for good SEO and user experience? Would I be better off getting rid of the ‘Woodsculp by Animal’, ‘Woodsculp by Collection’ and ‘Woodsculp by Release Date’ categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The only thing with this is there would be a lot of categories under the brand name which might make it more difficult for search engines and users to logically follow. Would I be better off getting rid of the brand category and replace them with the keyword categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 This would organise things more logically but I would then lose the brand category (and the potential of the brand keyword ranking?) Would I be better off choosing one main keyword to use as a category and then use tags for the other categories? Categories: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants Tags: Woodsculp Safari
Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The next issue I have is that I have products which could fall under several different categories. A product called Elijah Elephant, for example could fall under Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari and Woodsculp Summer 2022. In previous e-commerce sites I have never assigned multiple categories to one product (I instead have used tags). Is it good practice to organise products under multiple categories for an e-commerce site? Thanks in advance for any help and advice.0 -
Hamburger Menu on Desktop Version - Affect SEO?
Hi There We are working with developers of a site redesign of an existing site. They are keen on a hamburger menu on the desktop, as well as mobile. Can I confirm if this will have any implications for the SEO rankings? Many thanks in advance for assistance
On-Page Optimization | | DigitalProgress0 -
Is page speed important to improve SEO ranking?
I saw on a SEO Agency's site (https://burstdgtl.com/search-engine-optimization/) that page speed apparently affects Google ranking. Is this true? And if it is, how do I improve it, do I need an agency?
On-Page Optimization | | jasparcj0 -
Collections or blog posts for Shopify ecommerce seo?
Hi, hope you guys can help as I am going down a rabbit hole with this one! We have a solid-ranking sports nutrition site and are building a new SEO keyword strategy on our Shopify built store. We are using collections (categories) for much of the key product-based seo. This is because, as we understand it, Google prioritises collection/category pages over product pages. Should we then build additional collection pages to rank for secondary product search terms that could fit a collection page structure (eg 'vegan sports nutrition'), or should we use blog posts to do this? We have a quality blog with good unique content and reasonable domain authority so both options are open to us. But while the collection/category option may be best for SEO, too many collections/categories could upset our UX. We have a very small product range (10 products) so want to keep navigation fast and easy. Our 7 lead keyword collection pages do this already. More run the risk of upsetting ease/speed of site navigation. On the other hand, conversion rate from collection pages is historically much better than blog pages. We have made major technical upgrades to the blog to improve this but these are yet to be tested in anger. So at the heart of it all - do you guys recommend favouring blog posts or collection/category pages for secondary high sales intent keywords? All help gratefully received - thanks!
SEO Tactics | | WP332 -
Multiple H1 Tags on Page
Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
<sub>& <sup>tags, any SEO issues?</sup></sub>
Hi - the content on our corporate website is pretty technical, and we include chemical element codes in the text that users would search on (like S02, C02, etc.) A lot of times our engineers request that we list the codes correctly, with a <sub>on the last number. Question - does adding this code into the keyword affect SEO? The code would look like SO<sub>2</sub>.</sub> Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Jenny10
