Auto - update of h1 to h2
-
Hi,
I have recently inherited an ecommerce website and been tasked with improving SEO. I noticed a lot of pages were using several h1 tags and, with the help of my developer, used the css to overwrite the secondary headings as h2 tags.
However, since doing so many of the pages have fallen 15-40 places in the SERPS.
The h1 / h2 switch was the only update. Can anyone suggest why the pages would have fallen like this, and if it is a temporary measure likely to recover in time?
Thanks to anyone in advance for your help...
-
Ah ok, so generally I wouldn't suggest making any forced H1, H2 changes through php. Because, now all of your H1s will be affected (if I'm reading this right), which you don't want to happen.
Also if your issue before was having multiple H1 tags before, you'll now have multiple H2's. What CMS are you working in? Did you have multiple H1s before due to styling reasons (ex. Wordpress)?
If the header font style is what you were bothered with, modifying the css to reflect similarity across headers would work great. Then use the headers as you normally would.
Lastly, this should not affect your rankings that dramatically. I would look at your website analysis, backlink profile and see if any big on-site content changes were made.
-Hope this helps-
-
Hi Britney, thanks for for response on this.
This all gets quite complicated for my 'non-developer brain' but I'll try to explain how we've done it...
A .php file was used to define the structure of the product listings on our brand pages, so rather than amend every page my developer inserted some code, using a new class to overwrite some of the the h2 tags:
if(isset($modlet->h1)){?>
expandText($modlet->h1);?>
and replicated the h1 style for this class in the styles.css document.
I've checked the source as rendered in a browser and where the h1 tag should be the h2 tag appears, as expected.
Thank you for the suggestions, I'll look into these and let you know how I get on.
-
Agree with Matt, this drastic of a swing isn't likely due to changing your H1, H2s in CSS.
Can you please clarify "used the css to overwrite the secondary headings as h2 tags." ?
Lots of people use multiple H1s or H2s on a page due to formatting reasons. They like the way all of the H2s look (font size, weight, font, etc.) but the best way to go about this is to make custom CSS changes that modify ALL Header tags to look the same. This way you can use proper H1, H2, H3, H4, etc. and it won't look like a wonky cascading sub-title issue.
Some things to check regarding your ranking:
1. Google Search Console for server & index issues
2. Dropped 301s
3. New spammy backlinks
4. Any search console warnings
-
You know, what—I looked into this a bit more, and you actually might be right about what caused this. Let me get you some more help.
-
Hi Matt, thanks for your response.
I've not carried out any competitor analysis on this, what sort of thing should I be looking for?
-
That strikes me as a pretty massive change in rankings for a simple on-page change. Even a site-wide one, like that. Have you run any analysis on your competitors to see if anything they did might be to blame?
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
-
How would a redesign, content update and URL change affect ranking?
Hi guys, I have a question that I suspect there is no simple true or false answer to, but perhaps someone has done the same thing as we're pondering wether or not to do? We're taking over an existing site that ranks very well on all the important keywords and is obviously very well liked by Google. The site is today hosted on a sub-domain (xxx.domain.com). When taking over, we'll have to redesign the site and recreate most of the content on the site (unique). The site structure, URLs, incoming links etc. will remain exactly the same. Since we are recreating the site, we also have the opportunity to move the site off the sub-domain and on to the main domain (domain.com/xxx - 85/100 Moz rank) and do a 301 Permanent Redirect on all old URLs. Our long-time experience is that content on the main domain, ranks way better than the sub-domain. The big question is wether or not Google will punish us for both changing the content and the location of the site at the same time? Cheers!
Web Design | | mattbs
Matt0 -
Dealing with the impending Google mobile compliance update - is bMobilized any good as a temporary measure?
We've been caught a bit off guard with the upcoming Google mobile compliance issue and received the warnings in webmasters about fixing mobile usability issues. It will still be some time before we can have the site re-coded as responsive. I have stumbled upon a converter tool (which turns any site into one that's mobile friendly) called bMobilized, which essentially turns your site into one that's mobile friendly. Have you used bMobilized? Is it a safe idea to use this service temporarily until our new responsive site is ready in a few months? Do you have any suggestions for temporarily getting around the mobile compliance issue while our new responsive site is being built? Thanks
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Rich snippets tool/ schemer.org update?
We have a domain in the netherlands that shows stars (rich snippets) in adwords and in the organic search results. As we do the the in rich snippets test tool we see some errors as shown in the attachments, the errors are shown in review aggregate - but stars are stil shown in paid and organic search. Do we need to follow-up these errors? Do they influence ranking - or the stars in the near future? Z0fCKRW
Web Design | | remkoallertz1 -
Wordpress Site Structure and H1 Tags
We are working on optimizing a client's website and asked the client's webmaster to change a handful of H1 tags. The webmaster said they could not do to the existing names being pre-set in the design. The website is built in Wordpress. The client has repeating H1 tags due to the 'design'. I have attached a snapshot of the backend. Is there a rule around Wordpress site structure where this doesn't happen? Is it worth changing? If so,what is the best solution. Thank you ahead of time. ylAMvNg.jpg
Web Design | | seoessentials0 -
Site with no ads hit by Page Layout update?
Hi there! Can a site that has no ads on it be hit by Google's latest Page Layout update? Can it be hit for just one or two keywords? My site (www.ink2paper.com) has a decline in Google organic traffic in early Feb so my suspicion is the Page Layout update. However I have no ads on the site. Digging into GWMT I find that it is only one or 2 keywords that seems to have taken a dive, mainly [photo paper]. I used to get around 80 imps a day for this term. Then on 6 Feb it was down to 50; 7 Feb = 34; 8 Feb just 4 impressions! I got a spike back at usual levels on 10 & 11 Feb, but since then it has been back down to only 5 or so impressions a day. [photographic paper] took a small hit at the start of February, but has nose dived since the start of April. The homepage performs well for Google organic traffic - low bounce (22%) and good ecom conversion rate (14%) - although this is likely to be largely branded traffic. I feel my site is a 'good' result for the search term [photo paper], although there is always room for improvement of course! Any suggestions as to why Google has stopped showing my site for these keywords? All help is greatly appreciated. Cheers,
Web Design | | SimonHogg
Simon0 -
Pagerank and SERP rankings downhill after site update
Our site underwent a major update in September 2012. We put the entire site in WordPress and did away with our static pages. Then, in February 2013, we moved our shopping cart pages from a subdomain to our main domain (in WordPress). In both cases, we had to implement a massive 301 redirect through htaccess as most of our URLs changed with the update. Our site consists of the shopping cart (WooCommerce), blog, and supporting pages. We noticed traffic starting to drop around the last week of November (2012) and it has steadily declined ever since. None of our shop pages have a pagerank with virtually all them showing a gray bar with question mark. Only the shop homepage has some pagerank -- that too from 4 previously to 2 now. Some of the words we used to rank very well for before, we don't even show in the first five pages anymore. At first, we thought it was a temporary situation that would self correct over time, but it doesn't seem to get better at all. All said, we have lost over 80% of our traffic from Google organic. Upon repeated reviews, the 301 redirects seem to be done correctly and we don't see any serious mistakes that could cause such a huge drop. So the question is are we missing something? Are we not looking at the right places? Any ideas where we might start looking? We're simply looking for ideas and a fresh perspective.
Web Design | | bizmanuals0 -
Will updating our site from ASP .NET 3.5 to ASP .NET 4.0 negatively affect SEO?
I've checked out some of the other posts related to .NET upgrades, but none specifically address ASP .NET 4.0. I understand that there are many advantages to upgrading, but as with any change made to site code I want to be 110% positive that this upgrade will not affect how Google ranks my client's pages. Since the URL extension isn't changing (will remain .aspx), I'm thinking that there won't be much of an affect on SEO at all. In fact, I'm making the argument that the upgrade will only improve page rank. Anyone go through this upgrade and experience any immediate benefits or disadvantages? Thanks for your help!
Web Design | | FreightTEK0 -
Website Updates, will this affect my ranking/ DA or PA?
Hello All! My website is due for a big update soon, my current site is doing ok, however I want to update all of the content, structure, style and look of my whole site. I feel that with the way it's been going lately that it's time for an upgrade, my question is, will this affect my ranking? Will my page ranking's be affected? Will my DA be affected? I intend to optimize this new website perfectly too with all the things I've learnt since joining this forum. All the best, Paul
Web Design | | Paul_Tovey0