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.
Multiple H1 tags in Squarespace
-
Hi.
I'm using Squarespace, and I've noticed they assign the page title and site title h1 tag status. So if I add an on-page h1 tag, that's three in total.
I've seen what Matt Cutts said about multiple h1 tags being acceptable (although that video was back in 2009 and a lot has changed since then). But I'm still a little concerned that this is perhaps not the best way of structuring for SEO.
Could anyone offer me any advice?
Thanks.
-
I wouldn't buy that answer either. I don't think they have some secret knowledge, or way of doing things with site structure that would be against best practice yet still work. I think the templates are just made poorly and they are trying to make an excuse that some people will believe.
-
Hi Lesley. Thanks very much for responding to my question.
That's what I would have expected. But when I asked Squarespace about this, they told me "our system is designed to make sure that Google does not penalise for multiple H1 tags." and "When Google indexes and ranks your site, it will take your first H1 tag as being your site title and it will not take the other H1 tags into account negatively.".
I'm far from being an expert - hence asking on here to get some expert opinion. But to me, Squarespace's answer contradicts the accepted approach for good practice. I'm currently looking at trying to rectify this somehow, but I suspect the structure is 'hard-wired' into Squarespace.
Again, thanks for taking the time to answer Lesley. Much appreciated.
-
I would say it is not good practice. I think of the heading system as a structure system. Like a book or an outline. The h1 tag should be the title that encompasses the whole page. The h2 tags are like the chapters, h3 are sub chapters or strong points inside the chapters and so on.
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 is the correct Canonical tag on m.site?
We have 2 separate sites for desktop (www.example.com) and mobile (m.example.com) As per the guideline, we have added Rel=alternate tag on www.example.com to point to mobile URL(m.example.com) and Rel=canonical tag on m.example.com to point to Desktop site(www.example.com).However, i didn't find any guideline on what canonical tag we should add ifFor Desktop sitewww.example.com/PageA - has a canonical tag to www.example.com/PageBOn this page, we have a Rel=alternate tag m.example.com/pageAWhat will be the canonical we should add for the mobile version of Page Am.example.com/PageA - Canonical tag point to www.example.com/PageA -or www.example.com/PageB?Kalpesh
Technical SEO | | kguard0 -
What punctuation can you use in meta tags? Are there any Google does not like?
So I know you can use dashes and | in meta tags, but can anyone tell me what other punctuation you can use? Also, it'd be great to know what punctuation you can't use. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Trevorneo1 -
Brand name as H1 on every page
Hi, Along with the title of each page, a Wordpress client has their brand name as a H1 on every single page. This is situated in the footer and just sits within the company info/address. Should these tags be removed, leaving just the page titles as H1s? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category. Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print. Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Kelly
Technical SEO | | Kelly_S0 -
The Mysterious Case of Pagination, Canonical Tags
Hey guys, My head explodes when I think of this problem. So I will leave it to you guys to find a solution... My root domain (xxx.com) runs on WordPress platform. I use Yoast SEO plugin. The next page of root domain -- page/2/ -- has been canonicalized to the same page -- page/2/ points to page/2/ for example. The page/2/ and remaining pages also have this rel tags: I have also added "noindex,follow" to page/2/ and further -- Yoast does this automatically. Note: Yoast plugin also adds canonical to page/2/...page/3/ automatically. Same is the case with category pages and tag pages. Oh, and the author pages too -- they all have self-canonicalization, rel prev & rel next tags, and have been "noindex, followed." Problem: Am I doing this the way it should be done? I asked a Google Webmaster employee on rel next and prev tags, and this is what she said: "We do not recommend noindexing later pages, nor rel="canonical"izing everything to the first page." (My bad, last year I was canonicalizing pages to first page). One of the popular blog, a competitor, uses none of these tags. Yet they rank higher. Others following this format have been hit with every kind of Google algorithm I could think of. I want to leave it to Google to decide what's better, but then again, Yoast SEO plugin rules my blog -- okay, let's say I am a bad coder. Any help, suggestions, and thoughts are highly appreciated. 🙂 Update 1: Paginated pages -- including category pages and tag pages -- have unique snippets; no full-length posts. Thought I'd make that clear.
Technical SEO | | sidstar0 -
Bing rank drop off for multiple sites
Hi Mozzers, Seeing some wacky stuff going on on some sites I manage. In more than a few, the ranking on bing has dropped basically overnight from page one spots to not being found on the first 100 positions. Anyone else seeing similar results? Some of the sites are fairly new, some have been around for ages, some are wordpress, some are not. I've been searching for some news of a big change on bing, but keep reading about bing dropping the thin sites during black friday. In one example, I had the site set up in BWT for a while, and had a look at the data. The reports show that the pages are crawled, the index summary shows pages indexed, and there seems to be no crawl errors, but rankings are absolutely gone. Also, I can't see the sites in bing if I search "site:example.com" in bing. Here's 2 examples, the first would make sense since it's pretty thin as I havent added much content yet: http://homewindowtint.org but this one doesn't make sense to me. Sure there's a few errors, but to be dropped like a rock seems weird http://www.ahmedandsukaram.com
Technical SEO | | rosstaylor0 -
Alt and Title Attributes in Anchor Tags
Does it hurt to use alt and title attributes inside an anchor tag? Example: view my website article
Technical SEO | | donationtown0