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.
Using H3 before or instead of an H2...
-
My designer and I have been having an argument: we have a blog with short, 400 words posts. They have an H1 with nice keywords and a catchy title, and then a few subheadings. I don't like making the subheadings H2, because the font looks way too large in Wordpress, so my designer wants to make them all H4s, so the font looks to be a nicer size.
Here's my problem with that and why I usually just bold the subheadings: Is it really bad to put a bunch of H4s right under an H1, with not H2's or 3's to separate?
I'm reading different arguments on the internet about this and gladly welcome more debate and/or case studies. Thank you!
-
I agree with Roman and Donald that it's important for SEO to properly mark up your headings and should be fairly easy to change font size with CSS. It's also important to get your heading markup right so that folks who rely on screen readers and other accessibility devices can navigate your site.
-
Hi genevieveagar,
So, have your designer make the H2 text smaller. this is a simple css edit or use tiny mce which will give more control over text size. You should be using H2 for main ideas and the keywords in the H2 can help you rank. H3 should be used within the H2 or for less important headings.
Your WordPress default font sizes should not keep you from using your headings properly. It is a very simple fix.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
-
The hierarchy of your headers depends on the hierarchy of your content, so google use that hierarchy to understand the relevance of your content, so please don't change and destroy your content and your opportunities
Heading — HTML has six different heading tags — h1, h2, and so on. The h1 is considered the most important tag, and the h6 is the least important. The tags are often formatted from large (or most important) to smallest (or least important).
Let's take an example, we are going to create an article about
so let's take "buy a MacBook Pro" as the main keyword and here is your structureNote: this just an example base on my experience
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
H1-All you need to know before to buy a MacBook Pro - Main Keyword Goes Here
Then you add a description or Introduction Paragraph with the main keywordLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation
H2-the best places to buy a Mac Book Pro (Sub-topic secondary keyword or secondary topic) in this case the main topic is "buy a MacBook Pro" and the second topic is "where to buy it online" as you can see there is a direct relation between your H1-tag and your H2-tag
Paragraph related to this subtopic (Here some introductory paragraph)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation
And then here comes a list of possibles website where you can buy a Mac Book Pro (Again, inside your h2 you put a list of h3-tags that are directly related to the h2)
- H3- Official Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Amazon Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Ebay Website (Paragraph related to this content)
- H3- Apple Local Store(Paragraph related to this content)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
With this example, you can see that every header follow a structure. So if you have a problem with your font-size or font-weight, you just need to add some custom CSS, in fact, is pretty easy for any developer with a few experience ( Example CSS Headings )
_What I'm trying to say with this is, first _you _create a structure for your article this include headers, content, lists, call to actions, images and forms, then try to make a layout (nothing complex) and in this layout you can play with font-size, line-height or font-weight the easiest way to do that is using the _span- tag, with WordPress is easy to do it.
Why text structure is important for SEO - Yoast Article * How to use headings on your site - Yoast Article* How Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation Can Impact SEO - Whiteboard Friday
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
-
Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!
I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results. I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text. Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers). For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right? The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://moz.com/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case. Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 3, 2018, 6:32 AM | robandsarahgillespie0 -
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 14, 2017, 9:53 AM | lgrozeva0 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 20, 2015, 10:56 AM | blankslatedumbo0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 21, 2014, 5:36 AM | SEO_Promenade0 -
How to track mentions with links using Mentions App
We have a large client that we've just taken on board for organic search marketing. A great client that continually gets links from the BBC, NY Times etc which actually takes care of having to do any marketing for them. However, they get 10-15 unlinked mentions per day. Just recently, they peaked at 32 mentions in one day from JUST websites. But I need a quick way to filter these out and check if there is a link pointing to their website. I want to be able to build up a list of opportunities without having to manually check each website. How do, Mozzlars!?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 16, 2014, 1:33 PM | jasondexter0 -
How to resolve duplicate content issues when using Geo-targeted Subfolders to seperate US and CAN
A client of mine is about to launch into the USA market (currently only operating in Canada) and they are trying to find the best way to geo-target. We recommended they go with the geo-targeted subfolder approach (___.com and ___.com/ca). I'm looking for any ways to assist in not getting these pages flagged for duplicate content. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 9, 2014, 3:01 PM | jyoung2220 -
When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?
when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores? I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 6, 2023, 7:22 AM | BrooklynCruiser3 -
Sitemaps. When compressed do you use the .gz file format or the (untidy looking, IMHO) .xml.gz format?
When submitting compressed sitemaps to Google I normally use the a file named sitemap.gz A customer is banging on that his web guy says that sitemap.xml.gz is a better format. Google spiders sitemap.gz just fine and in Webmaster Tools everything looks OK... Interested to know other SEOmoz Pro's preferences here and also to check I haven't made an error that is going to bite me in the ass soon! Over to you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 18, 2011, 7:44 AM | NoisyLittleMonkey0