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.
Does google look at H3 tags?
-
I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2. I haven't found much online to back this up or discredit it; thought I'd ask the Moz community!
-
Thank you everyone for your responses. Sorry for the belated reply -- I didn't realize this question had garnered any responses. This is helpful information and thanks again.
-
"I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2. "
Pay this person no mind in the future.
The answer given by Nicholas White is perfect.
-
Google does look at h tags to understand the structure of the content on the page better, Googler John Mueller confirmed this several years ago. Therefore it’s good practice to have your H1 as a main page or title of the piece then main subheadings as H2, any further sub-headings needed to divide content under these H3-H6. A lot don’t go to this depth and focus on H1 and multiple H2s achieving good results. When I have taken it further I don’t believe it has made a significant impact on rankings compared to when I haven’t.
Hope this helps -
My understanding is they do look at H3 tags and valuate them as being higher emphasis than normal paragraph copy, however, they do not have a much "weight" in the on-page algorithm as the H1 or H2s. If having H3s makes sense for your page's content and helps the user better read and understand the content, I say H3s are positive and I would not hesitate to use them.
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
-
Google News and Discover down by a lot
Hi,
Technical SEO | | SolenneGINX
Could you help me understand why my website's Google News and Discover Performance dropped suddenly and drastically all of a sudden in November? numbers seem to pick up a little bit again but nowhere close what we used to see before then0 -
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Hidden H1 Tag on Image
Hi, In the page I'm working on, I encountered an tag in an image, rather than in a text form. Do you think it's an issue when it comes to SEO?
Technical SEO | | nerdieb
What do you suggest I should do if there is an issue? Keen to hear from you!0 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Isnt it better to have headlines in H1 and H2 tags instead of p tags?
I am working with a simple site http://http://lightsigns.com/Uniko_Manufacturing_Limited.html They seek more SEO traffic. However, the two big headlines that read "Wholesale Supply to the Sign and Display Industries" which is on line 241 and 242 of the source code, its in a p tag, i.e. <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Wholesale Supply to the and <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-bottom: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Sign and Display Industries Likewise, the product titles are in p tags, also. For example, on the Slide-in Light Box product page, http://lightsigns.com/Slide_In_light_box.html , I have done keyword research and no one is using the words slide in light box.Plus, it is also a p tag, ie. line 43 reads style="padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style">Slide-in Light Box If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO-optimized keywords such as Display Light Box - Slide-In LIght Box, would this indeed help SEO? In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons1 -
• symbol in title tag
We have a few title tags with a circular dot symbol, which is created by the code "•" Humans see a dot, but googlebot sees • Does this negatively impact our SEO, or is googlebot aware that **• == *** to human eyes
Technical SEO | | lighttable0 -
Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?
New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | askotzko1 -
UK website ranking higher in Google.com than Google.co.uk
Hi, I have a UK website which was formerly ranked 1<sup>st</sup> in Google.co.uk and .com for my keyword phrase and has recently slipped to 6<sup>th</sup> in .co.uk but is higher in position 4 in Google.com. I have conducted a little research and can’t say for certain but I wonder if it is possible that too many of my backlinks are US based and therefore Google thinks my website is also US based. Checked Google WmT and we the geo-targeted to the UK. Our server is also UK based. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tdsnet0