Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
-
Hi All,
I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page.
I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think?
If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
-
Thanks Nigel,
That is my line of thinking as well. I'm in the process of separating the pages of the blog into separate pages. Each post is already optimized with a meta description and from my perspective, I think that having them all on one page is muddying the content.
They do claim to have the HTML5 configured correctly but I'm not seeing any of the blog posts ranking anywhere - only the home page of my site.
This blog set up nonsense was the reason I went over to WP - but after dealing with too many system crashes and bloated themes- I realized, if I was a developer then WP would be perfect, but for me and the little time I want to spend on my website- SS is a good choice.
However, their blog set up is confounding!
-
Hi Ramjam
I have read a lot about HTML5 - but nowhere is there a direct comparison between the SEO rank in SERPS of an article separated by HTML5 tags vs an Article on a unique page marked up correctly.
My feeling is that given an article in the middle of a multi article single blog page and an article placed on its own page that the latter would rank much higher. However, I have no evidence to show you as there does not appear to be any.
If you still feel that this is a viable route to go then read this:
Then place an article on the same page with others marked up correctly with HTML5 Headers, Article & H1 tags and one on its own unique page. See which rank higher.
Maybe this is a question we should put directly to Rand and ask him to do a whiteboard Friday on it. Every bit of SEO advice I have ever read has been about creating unique pages with their own defined content so this goes against all of that!
Regards
Nigel
-
Here's a response from the Squarespace forum, does this make sense?
"...HTML5 has changed this by introducing some new semantic tags that each take an h1 tag (article, section, etc). Squarespace uses these new semantic tags to differentiate content such as blog posts and that's why there are multiple h1 tags per page. Search engines are now optimized to account for this so it's not a problem anymore. Some HTML validators will still throw red flags, so that may be why you are getting that advice."
I'm reading that this is acceptable in HTML5 format but am wondering if search engines actually find it acceptable as well?
-
Completly Agree good answer my friend
-
Thanks guys, that is my thought as well.
I do like Squarespace (I've had experience using SS, Wix, Weebly, and WP) for my business needs. When I had my massage business here in San Diego, I was able to get on the first page of a Google search for my services on a SS site, so I know it can be optimized.
But the blog set up is really funky. The titles of the blog post are automatically set to H1's, so Ceseare, your suggestion wouldn't work because so far I've got around 21 posts and I can't do H2-H21, that would be worthless I think.
They do enable each post to have it's own meta description and tags- but they are showing up all on one page in my Screaming Frog and Ahrefs tools.
Thanks Nigel and Cesare- you guys confirmed that I will go in and just make each blog post its own page. Because each post is already centered around a keyword/phrase.
-
Hi Ramjam
It sounds like you have all of your blog posts on one page and that the header for each post is an H1. This is really bad from an SEO point of view as the resulting page is huge and splattered with conflicting keywords. Google would have no idea how to rank the page and for what.
The best way to run your blog is to have a single page for each post - this is the only way that you can properly separate content and to write about properly themed and separate subjects. Then you can add appropriate META tags for each page (Title & Description) and focus on a single focus keywords or very tight selection of contextually similar keywords. Also remember that when you add images to name them the focus keyword to further help with the SEO of the page.
You can still use H1s on that page but keep them keyword focused and don't duplicate content across pages. You will find that each blog page will be listed in Google. Note: ensure that tags are turned off and categories are properly optimized when you do this as this can add duplicate content URLs.
I hope that helps
Regards
Nigel
Carousel Projects
-
Although its possible to have multiple H1 tags on one page I personally wouldn't do that. There is no reason to make things more complicated than they should. 1 H1 for every post, 1-3 H2 if needed. Thats is. Like this its clear and unambigious.
Another discussion here about that topic: https://moz.com/community/q/multiple-h1-tags-for-different-section-on-one-webpage-in-html5-website-should-i-have-only-one
Hope this helps.
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
-
On Brand Queries Google does not shows my home page first instead of it shows internal pages.
Also on my brand query it doesn't shows sitelinks. What may be the reason?
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Title Tags for Index Pages
What tactics do you use to change the title tags of your index page so they're not all the same? For example, if you have an index page that has 100 pages, each with the same title, what tactics do you use to give each page a unique title and how important is it?
On-Page Optimization | | felt0 -
Sold Products appear as duplicate pages 'Page Not Found' ???
Hi there, I'm down to just 6 duplicate page warnings but I'm not sure how to deal with this one: Information Page Not Found! http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=6 My Ecommerce shopping site products are unique, 1 of a kind. So once one product has sold and been delivered we take the product off our website, hence the Information Page Not Found! As I understand when search engines re-index these warnings will drop off but new sold products would replace them. So redirecting seems like hard work and never ending. Is it ok to ignore these warnings? Thanks Mozzers..
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
What is the importance of image file names and H1, H2 and H3 tags
Hello, My client thinks they will get better rankings if we change the product image names to reflect the keywords for that page, is this true? I believe I just have to add "alt tags" but not sure now. Also, they think its very important to have H1, H2 and H3 tags on each page. I thought this wasn't a big factor anymore. Is it? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | maximumrank0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Authority of a page
What factors contribute towards the authority of a page ? No. of links to a page ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0