Having a Keyword in # is not that important in 2018, Do you agree?
-
Earlier having a Keyword in
was one of the important ranking factor or at least every SEO guru use to suggest this. But, of late, we are noticing that Google is not giving much weightage to it.
What are your thoughts on this?
-
We have had this lively debate at our agency and another factor is ADA conformance - which requires an H1 for screenreaders. Does anyone have research as to if the H1 is visually hidden (but in code for screenreaders), this is a black hat technique or acceptable? Looking at even Moz's own site and Google for H1 best practices is a rabbit hole of this H1 argument between developers and marketing.
-
Yep, I always try to figure out user's intent and then try to match: Search Query = Page Title in Serps = Relevant landing page's H1. Always works great for us!
-
Some people will argue endlessly and to their last breath about that.
But, we have <title>matching <h1> on thousands of pages and the result has been killer against difficult competition. </p> <p>One must be careful not to blindly follow everything one reads about SEO in forums, in tool instructions and in articles because at least 40% percent is outdated, another 20% is rubbish, and another 20% is prattle. (and much of what I have written falls into those categories too)</p> <p>The best thing to do is to decide who you are will to believe rather than what you are willing to believe, look at the date, then bet on your own judgement.</p> <p> </p></title>
-
I think I saw somewhere a warning somewhere if the description was matched to an H2 or something silly like that! lol
I completely agree with you EGOL!
Rant on!
-
I want the target keyword in
for search engines - because I think that it is helpful to ranking. And, I also want the keyword there for the visitor - because it tells them "You Have Arrived".
<rant>Somebody started spreading the word that <title>matching <h1> is bad form. They should be sent to jail. :-)</rant></p></title></rant>
-
Yep exactly! Every page should be targeted to a specific keyword theme, therefore it makes sense the keyword is in the h1 so the user (and Google is one of those users) knows exactly what the page is about from the get-go Good luck!
-
Hi Sameer
My thoughts are that it is the overall content on the page which is important. Having semantically connected keywords and phrases in a well written, contextually strong format which conveys the theme of the page perfectly.
I don't regard H1 on its own as a ranking factor but as part of defining the theme of the page, it is absolutely essential.
Using H2s to further break up the content into well defined closely related blocks of text is also very important.
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi,
It is absolutely still valuable.
Thanks
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
-
Related Keywords: How many separate pages?
We have an attorney website. There is a practice area that our research shows many different 2-4 word length keyword queries for. The keywords are all very different, but they end up in the same kind of legal action. We're wondering whether we should write many different pages, perhaps 10, to cover all the basic different keyword categories, or whether we should just write a few pages. In the latter situation, many of the target key words would be mentioned in the text, but wouldn't get placement in a url or title tags. One basic problem is that since the keyword queries are made up of different words, but result in the same kind of legal action and applicable law, the content of the pages might be similar with the only difference being a paragraph that speaks to that specific key word. The rest of the content would be quite similar among the pages, i.e. "here is the law that applies, contact us." Also, some of the keywords, like the name of the law, would have to be repeated on all the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RFfed90 -
Difference LSI and and secondary related keywords
Hi, It is confusing to me. So far what I understand is the following: LSI are synonyms of the keyword your target (the one in the H1 and title tag). For example my keyword would be "Tuscany bike tour" and my LSI would be "Tuscany cycling vacation", "bicycle tour in Tuscany" etc... Then secondary related keyword are for me the other topics I need to cover in my content. In this case for example it would be "Florence", "Siena". But from what I understand a good writer wouldn't use "Siena" or "Florence" multiple times in it's content it would replace it by keywords that support them such as "the town of Florence", "the city of Siena"," the Palio of Siena" etc...Is my understanding correct ? If so what is the use of using those secondary related keyword, is it to rank on other keywords such as Palio of siena tuscany bike tour ? or just not to repeat a secondary keyword too many times. If i write the Palio of Siena isn't it considered as another topic that the topic siena ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
A few important mobile SEO questions
I have a few basic questions about mobile SEO. I'd appreciate if any of you fabulous Mozzers can enlighten me. Our site has a parallel mobile site with the same urls, using an m. domain for mobile and www. for desktop. On mobile pages, we have a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the matching desktop URL and on desktop pages we have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to the matching mobile URL. When someone visits a www. page using a mobile device, we 301 them to the mobile version. Questions: 1. Do I want my mobile pages to be indexed by Google? From Tom's (very helpful) answers here, it seems that I only want Google indexing the full site pages and if the mobile pages are indexed it's actually a duplicate content issue. This is really confusing to me since Google knows that it's not duplicate content based on the canonical tag. But - he makes a good point - what is the value of having the mobile page indexed if the same page on desktop is indexed (I know that Google is indexing both because I see them in search results. When I search on mobile Google serves the mobile page and when I search on desktop Google serves me the desktop page.)? Are these pages competing with each other? Currently, we are doing everything we can do ensure that our mobile pages are crawled (deeply) and indexed, but now I'm not sure what the value of this is? Please share your knowledge. 2. Is a mobile page's ranking affected by social shares of the desktop version of the same page? Currently, when someone uses the share buttons on our mobile site, we share the desktop url (www. - not m.). The reason we do this is that we are afraid that if people are sharing our content with 2 different url's (m.mysite.com/some_post and www.mysite.com/some_post) the share count will not be aggregated for both url's. What I'm wondering is: will this have a negative effect on mobile SEO, since it will seem to Google that our mobile pages have no shares, or is this not a problem, since the desktop pages have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to mobile pages, so Google gives the same ranking to the mobile page as the desktop page (which IS being shared)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Possible for SERP appearance to change on a keyword?
Hi, We're currently working with a brand name which happens to be the name of a small town in the US (126 population). When Googling the brand / town name, there's a map on the right-hand side of the SERP. (Google Maps, with the town highlighted) We're based in Sweden, and this is even showing up on a search on the Swedish Google. I'm wondering; Is it possible for the map to "be removed" as our brand becomes more known? Does anyone have any similar experiences? Is it a better idea to just switch brand name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSTRANDELL0 -
Best Tool For Finding Related Keywords?
What is the best tool for finding related keywords to the primary keyword we are targetting? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webguru20140 -
Keyword Planner - Landing Page Results
When i enter a landing page (a site page) in Google KW Planner Tool it returns an interesting set of results that I would like help with please? The first few results are relevant to that page BUT then it shows KW results that are for any page of my site. The fact that its reporting on the whole of my site rather than just that page - does it matter? ie will google be able to work it out which is the target page vs links to the rest of my site through the site navigation? The site had been live since June 2013 and we struggle to get on Page 1 SERPs, for most of our top themes and i wondered whether this could be a contributing factor? Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Price Range: Top Notch Keyword Research
How many years would someone need to have to be experienced enough to provide a thorough job of providing me with keyword research? I am willing to pay for the best job but I don't want to be taken to the cleaners...especially by someone that may not be giving me the best effort or that is not qualified. ( I was just quoted $200 an hour from an 18 yr old today) We are getting ready to change our URL's and add keywords but I am not sure which terms to add and in what order. I have heard put the most important words first but I am not sure which are the most important. 🙂 By my research we only have about 5 keywords but I am not sure. (Excluding long tail)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0