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.
Using H3 before or instead of an H2...
-
My designer and I have been having an argument: we have a blog with short, 400 words posts. They have an H1 with nice keywords and a catchy title, and then a few subheadings. I don't like making the subheadings H2, because the font looks way too large in Wordpress, so my designer wants to make them all H4s, so the font looks to be a nicer size.
Here's my problem with that and why I usually just bold the subheadings: Is it really bad to put a bunch of H4s right under an H1, with not H2's or 3's to separate?
I'm reading different arguments on the internet about this and gladly welcome more debate and/or case studies. Thank you!
-
I agree with Roman and Donald that it's important for SEO to properly mark up your headings and should be fairly easy to change font size with CSS. It's also important to get your heading markup right so that folks who rely on screen readers and other accessibility devices can navigate your site.
-
Hi genevieveagar,
So, have your designer make the H2 text smaller. this is a simple css edit or use tiny mce which will give more control over text size. You should be using H2 for main ideas and the keywords in the H2 can help you rank. H3 should be used within the H2 or for less important headings.
Your WordPress default font sizes should not keep you from using your headings properly. It is a very simple fix.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
-
The hierarchy of your headers depends on the hierarchy of your content, so google use that hierarchy to understand the relevance of your content, so please don't change and destroy your content and your opportunities
Heading — HTML has six different heading tags — h1, h2, and so on. The h1 is considered the most important tag, and the h6 is the least important. The tags are often formatted from large (or most important) to smallest (or least important).
Let's take an example, we are going to create an article about
so let's take "buy a MacBook Pro" as the main keyword and here is your structureNote: this just an example base on my experience
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
H1-All you need to know before to buy a MacBook Pro - Main Keyword Goes Here
Then you add a description or Introduction Paragraph with the main keywordLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation
H2-the best places to buy a Mac Book Pro (Sub-topic secondary keyword or secondary topic) in this case the main topic is "buy a MacBook Pro" and the second topic is "where to buy it online" as you can see there is a direct relation between your H1-tag and your H2-tag
Paragraph related to this subtopic (Here some introductory paragraph)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation
And then here comes a list of possibles website where you can buy a Mac Book Pro (Again, inside your h2 you put a list of h3-tags that are directly related to the h2)
- H3- Official Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Amazon Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Ebay Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Apple Local Store(Paragraph related to this content)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
With this example, you can see that every header follow a structure. So if you have a problem with your font-size or font-weight, you just need to add some custom CSS, in fact, is pretty easy for any developer with a few experience ( Example CSS Headings )
_What I'm trying to say with this is, first _you _create a structure for your article this include headers, content, lists, call to actions, images and forms, then try to make a layout (nothing complex) and in this layout you can play with font-size, line-height or font-weight the easiest way to do that is using the _span- tag, with WordPress is easy to do it.
Why text structure is important for SEO - Yoast Article * How to use headings on your site - Yoast Article* How Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation Can Impact SEO - Whiteboard Friday
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
-
If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance?
Hi, If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?
I just shut off the All-In-One seo pack plugin for wordpress, and turned on the Yoast plugin. It's great! So much helpful, seo boosting info! So, in watching a video on how to configure the plugin, it mentions that I should update the sitemap, using the Yoast sitemap I'm afraid to do this, because I'm pretty technologically behind... I see I have a Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold) plugin turned on (and have had it for many years). Should I leave this one on? Or would you recommend going through the steps to use the Yoast plugin sitemap? If so, what are the benefits of the Yoast plugin, over the Google XML? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation
Hey, all. I have client that uses tags in the navigation for its blog. For example, tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc. This is handled through their WordPress theme. This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether tags are semantically appropriate. Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple tags, would it be more appropriate to use tags for this menu navigation? Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our tags by using them for menu navigation? The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag. Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask44435230 -
Using Canonical URL to poin to an external page
I was wondering if I can use a canonical URL that points to a page residing on external site? So a page like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | llamb
www.site1.com/whatever.html will have a canonical link in its header to www.site2.com/whatever.html. Thanks.0 -
Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?
A customer of ours has a website in Belgium. There two main languages in Belgium: Dutch and French.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox
At first there was only a Dutch version with a .be extension. Right now they are implementing the French Belgium version on the URL website.be/fr. All of the content and comments will be translated. Also the URL’s will change from Dutch to French, so you've got two URL’s with the same content but in another language. Question: Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country? I think Google will understand this is just for the usability for a Multilanguage country. What do you guys think???0 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
My understanding of domain authority is that the more links pointing to any page / resource on a domain, the greater the overall domain authority (and weight passed from outbound links on the domain) is. Because URL shorteners create links on their own domain that redirect to an off-domain page but link "to" an on-domain URL, are they gaining domain authority each time someone publishes a shortened link from their service? Or does Google penalize these sites specifically, or links that redirect in general? Or am I missing something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay.Neely0