Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading (used for emphasis)?
-
Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading? My clients are using heading tags for text they want to emphasize and make stand out. Does this affect search rankings for SEO?
-
It's not likely to be a penalty, but it's also not proper use of the tag. Personally, I'd want to change it.
-
I would expect to. I can't say I've ever come across this question but we know Google doesn't really care if our headings are wrapped in a
tag these days, they just look at the styling so I would suppose this would be the same, just in reverse.
That said, it's kind of an awkward thing to do
-
Hi there.
What do you mean by heading tag? H1,H2 etc?
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
-
My Website disappeared from Google Search Results overnight
Hello there, I'm the owner of the Website https://cours-toujours.com/, dedicated to reviewing running shoes. My Website is pretty young and I'm currently focused on building new reviews (so I keep adding new articles, week after week, I did not really focus on the rest of the website for now).Until a few days ago, I saw growing traffic on my Website, everything seemed good and I kept adding new reviews to my website.And then suddently traffic dropped and went to 0 in 2 days (I went from 550 impressions/day to 49 impressions/day in 2 days :/)When I look in the Google Search Console, I don't see any issue: my sitemaps are submitted and the correct number of URLs are reported I don't have any Manual Action or Security Issue I don't have any Removal Request Everything seems fine... But I can barely find my website in Google Search Results.When I do a site search (site:cours-toujours.com), I find only 2 pages of results, mostly non-important pages (categories, etc.).I asked in Google Community Forums, and i got this reply about my pages being too similar to one another (https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/44880689?hl=en). But I'm not really happy with this answer, as all my pages have ~1000 words of unique content (even if of course they have the same structure as they are all dedicatd to reviewing a running shoe...)Any idea where this might come from/how I can fix the issue?
Technical SEO | | SimonCoursToujours0 -
PDF in search results?
Hello community! I am not an SEO professional, though I am a practitioner, I would say. I am seeking a solution on behalf of a friend. If you search the term "Peter Blatt" you will discover a "black eye" on the first page, towards the bottom of SERPs. It's a PDF published on the Florida Department of Financial Services website regarding the final order for a settlement he and his company ("Blatt Financial Group") reached with the state as it related to professional conduct allegations. Does anyone have any advice on how to address this? I don't want "game" the search engines, but at the same time, this document looks really scary and much worse than it actually is to people, and I would love for it do drop below page one. Any advice or suggestions from the community? Thanks! Tom
Technical SEO | | 800GoldLaw0 -
301'd site, but new site is not getting picked up in google.
Hi I'm having big issues! Any help would be greatly appreciated This is the 3rd time this happened. Every time I switch my old site greatcleanjokes.com to the new design of chokeonajoke.com traffic goes almost completely down (I even tried out the new design on greatcleanjokes [to see if it was a 301 issue] and traffic also went down.) What can possibly be wrong with this new site that google just doesn't like it ?! I was ranking high up for many big phrase like joke of the day, corny jokes, clean jokes, short jokes. Now It's all gone. I also think it's strange that when I search for site:chokeonajoke.com the post pages show up before the category pages!? Here is the old site http://web.archive.org/web/20140406214615/http://www.greatcleanjokes.com/ Here is the new one http://chokeonajoke.com/ If you can't figure out anything do you know of anyone I can hire who may be able to figure it out?
Technical SEO | | Nickys22111 -
Content Based on User's IP Address
Hello, A client wants us to create a page on two different sites (www.brandA.com/content and www.brandB.com/content) with similar content and serve up specific content to users based on their IP addresses. The idea is that once a user gets to the page, the content would slightly change (mainly contact information and headers) based on their location. The problem I am seeing with this is that both brandA and brandB would be different Urls so there is a chance if their both optimized for the similar terms then they would both rank and crowd up the search results (duplicate content). Have you seen something similar? What are your thoughts and/or potential solutions? Also, do you know of any sites that are currently doing something similar?
Technical SEO | | Rauxa0 -
Amazon Product Descriptions and our website's product descriptions
I am updating our product descriptions site-wide. I wanted to also update our amazon listings for those same products. Is that considered duplicate content if it would be on amazon and our site? Is there any reason why I wouldn't want to do that? Is google product ads also a problem?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
On-Page Report Says 'F', and I'm Confoozled As to Why
I'm primarily interested in how we failed in our "Broad Keyword Usage in Title" category. The Keyword Pair we're gunnin' for is: "Mac Windows" Our current page title is: "CrossOver: Windows on Mac and Linux with the easiest and most affordable emulator - CodeWeavers" This is, I grant, ugly. However, bear with me. SEOMoz Report Card says "Easy Fix!" and suggests: "Employ the keyword in the page title, preferrably as the first words in the element." I humbly submit that "Mac" and "Windows" IS in the page title. So what am I missing? Is it the placement of the words relative to each other, or relative to the start of the sentence? Or is the phrase "CrossOver:" somehow blocking the rest of the sentence from being read? Are colons evil? I'm genuinely mystified as to why (from a structural standpoint) our existing title tag is failing this test, and I'd be delighted for answers and/or feedback. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | CodeWeavers0 -
Site: search doesn't return homepage first
When searching for site:myclient.com their homepage doesn't appear first. I know some SEOs have reported this was a warning sign that there was a penalty. Here is what I've checked/found: Toolbar pagerank remains strong. Homepage is indexed. SEO traffic is falling, but its been gradually falling for a year now, mainly due to the client neglecting any type of marketing campaigns or link building, I believe. There was not a specific drop that could be tied to a penalty. Site remains well indexed. 62,742 of 63,021 URLs in the sitemap are indexed. Site is a large ecommerce site, so many pages are duplicate content (product descriptions). Homepage does rank #1 when searching for string of text present on the homepage. Nothing unusual in Google Webmaster Tools Search for myclient.com returns homepage with 6 expanded sitelinks under it. Google safe browsing check shows no malware. Anything else I should check?
Technical SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
What's the website that analyzes all local business submissions?
I was recently looking at a blog post here or a webinar and it showed a website where you could see all of the local sites (yelp, Google places) where your business has been submitted. It was an automated tool. Does anyone remember the name of the site?
Technical SEO | | beeneeb0