How crucial are H1 tags and descriptions in wordpress categories?

[gary_nectarbridge]

Hi all

Trying to improve SEO for my (mostly) local site, www.nectarbridge.com, and recently got back on Moz Pro account. First crawl of my site by Moz, a manageable number of issues that I've mostly sorted, but the category with the largest number of problems is missing or invalid

tags.

My content pages and blog posts are not missing the tags. It's category, archives, etc., including multiple pages, ex:

https://www.nectarbridge.com/category/blog/page/4/

A smaller number of pages are being flagged by Moz as missing descriptions, and they are also category pages and the like.

So the question is - how hard should I pursue fixing these issues? I'm using the divi theme, which apparently doesn't display the category description by default (if it did, that would kill two birds with one stone). There is a fix to add the category description, but before I get into that I'm trying to discern whether this issue really matters greatly to SEO or if I should spend that time just working on more content.

[sarahwalsh]

H1 tags are very important aspect of SEO, because they give a clear indication what products or services are being sold on that page. So do make sure save you have say a WordPress website, that you add H1 title to each page. Even if you have had your website built by a web designer, and they haven't added H1 titles, often, you simply add these titles later on, its a piece of cake, especially if you have a WordPress website.

[sarahwalsh]

H1 tags are important because they tell Google precisely what the page is about, but again, these need to be written in a white-hat way. We done this for a Bristol summerhouse company, and we got that business onto page one.

[oyeooooo]

I analyzed my website: techiewiz.com and it says I only have 1 h1 tag despite the fact that my post titles are all h1.

Can anyone teach me how to solve this, please?

I think h1 are a must include for good on-page seo but maybe it is my theme function or WordPress acting funny.

I already provided the link so anyone who wants to run the SEO audit can see what I am talking about.

I need Google to read my h1 as post title and not h2 as post title.

[gary_nectarbridge]

Thanks Vijay.

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Gary,

I reviewed your complete website and I really appreciate the kind of SEO efforts ( including Blog) that you have put in. As for the H1 issue for the category page, you can fix it from the changes suggested on the link you have posted on your reply. I would like to add some suggestions, that might help you in the long run.  As don suggested to fix URL structure, you can start by taking reference from here https://moz.com/learn/seo/url .

• The blog title can be optimized from Blog - Nector Bridge to something relevant like Blog - Business Consulting (local area name) .
• Your website looks good, but it can be improved by adding/changing some aesthetic elements on the pages (like pacing between elements etc.), which will help it look better and also help on the UI front.
• The H1 and H2 tags are going to be your best friends, optimize all pages effectively for the tags and writing effective titles under these tags.
• Your google pagespeed is coming at 34/100 for Mobile, kindly get it fixed.
• I see that your website is mainly optimized for the keyword 'Business Consulting', it would be a good idea to add local area name along with the keyword for local SEO, this helps in more ways than just local listing benefits. Give it a try.

Keep up with the good work on the SEO and Blog. Let me know if you need any kind of help.

Regards,

Vijay

[ClaytonJ]

In my view yes, you should fix the issues.  The key about good seo - is not "only pulling certain levers" but where feasible doing everything right. We find when we do all the basics right the results sometimes take care of themselves. It lets you sleep easier as well. Instead of thinking "what if?".

H1's influence rankings - I have implemented some that have had a small impact, however, most do not. There is impact enough to optmise.  The  H1 is also great for usability, which can increase conversions. This is a ranking factor - time on page, bounce rate etc. It could increase your quality score if using Adwords.  Additionally if a customer clicks on a search result which has a consistent message via URL, Title tag and H1 it is confirmation to click-through to a page and builds trust on topic - hopefully good content follows.

For the visually impaired marking up your HTML with header tags is also appropriate to facilitate screen readers.

I would also review your URL structure. If you want rankings then they again in my view should be consistent with the page offering.

Hope that helps.