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.
H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation
-
Hey, all.
I have client that uses
tags in the navigation for its blog. For example,
tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc. This is handled through their WordPress theme.
This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether
tags are semantically appropriate. Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple
tags, would it be more appropriate to use
tags for this menu navigation? Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our
tags by using them for menu navigation?
The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag. Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.
-
Hi everyone!
Only a year late to this question...
Do you know if anyone has done any A/B testing on how H2s in the nav can negatively affect a website's rankings? I'm on the same page with everyone that it is a big no-no to do, but am getting push back from our development team. They want me to prove that it hurts a website before they change the site. Figured I'd reach out here to see if you any of you have seen tests that prove this.
Thanks you!
-Rachel
-
Patrick gave a great answer above.
Now that you mention they are at the bottom of the page, I would definitely remove the h2 or hwhatever and simply style them with css.
-
Thanks so much for the response!
I may have done a bad job of explaining this, so I just want to double-check that I understand you.
The tags are actually below the blog at the bottom of the page; "Library," for instance, might list the months of blog activity below it (January, February, etc.) I shouldn't have referred to them as a menu.
The reason that I think header tags might be defensible is that they could help a user understand the organizational structure of these sub-categories.
Does that change your answer at all, or do you still recommend handling this element through CSS? Thanks!
-
Hi there
Usually, H2s and H3s are reserved for your content structure and prioritization of importance in the content on the page, not in your top navigation.
As your content (should) starts with an H1, this semantically will mess your header structure up because you have an H1 below H2s and H3s that live in your top navigation.
If you like the way that those menu fonts and sizes look, I would suggest looking into CSS Font styling - therefore you can set up how you want your font to look in the menu and have a proper header structure on your page content. This will be better for your On-Site SEO.
Hope this helps - let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Advice on redirects for a category I want to reuse.
Hi, We have a current category set up that is starting to rank OK but we are going through a site re-build and this category URL will now better describe a new category of products. My dilemma is if I 301 redirect the current url to my new category I won't be able to use the URL for the new one. But if I don't redirect it will the pages that have already been ranked under this url then confuse customers and search engines. For example - Products and sub-categories under the URL /personalised-toys will now become /personalised-toys-for-boys but I want to use the /personalised-toys URL for a different set of sub categories and products. Any assistance or ideas or just definitely don't do it in a particular way would be greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neil_stickergizmo0 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Categories showing on SERP listings?
Hi I was wondering if anyone knows what these are called? See attached screenshot. Basically, it looks like Google is pulling the primary category and then sub categories from the site and adding them to the SERP listing. Are there any benefits to this besides possibly higher CTR? Cheers. wn3ybMMOQFW98fNQkxtJkA.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak651 -
Putting Dates In Title Tag
Hi, I have a site were I write previews for sports match ups. I notice when I don't put the date in the title I rank much better for specific keywords. I also noticed that most people don't really put in the date when they do the search anyways, especially since google does a good job of showing the most recent pages anyways. The only reason I continue to put the date is because of this whole idea of not having page titles that are duplicate. So many of our games will be Team A vs Team B Preview, and Im worried that the term "preview" will become so repetitive that google may not like it. Any tips or ideas on how to approach this issue best? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tarafaraz1 -
H2 Tags- Can you have more than 1 H2 tag
Hi All, Screaming frog has identified that we have a few H2 tags on our pages , although we only have 1 H1 tag. We have numerous H3,H4's etc. I am wondering, is it good SEO to have only 1 H2 tag like with H1 tag or can you have more ? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
How does Google treat Header tags now? H1s, H2s and H3s. What happens if you skip the H2?
The theme I am using now means each page on my is currently set up like this: h1> keyword phrase keyword phrase The new theme I want to use is different h1> keyword phrase Will changing the theme have a negative effect on the rankings due to losing the h2 on each page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianflannery0 -
Meta tags - are they case sensitive?
I just ran the wordtracker tool and noticed something interesting. The tool didn't pick up our meta description. It's strange as our meta descriptions appear in organic search results and Moz never reported missing meta descriptions.After reviewing other pages, I noticed our meta description tag is written as the following: name="Description" content=" I never thought about this, but are meta tags case sensitive? Should it be written as: name="description" content=" Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Does City In Title Tag Inhibit Broader Reach?
I use our city/state in the majority of our title tags and consequently we do very well locallly for the majority of terms on our ecommerce site. I'm wondering however, if this "localized" optimization will inadvertently affect our keyword rankings outside of our city/state? If a keyword query does not include our city or state, would Google interpret our titles as less relevent and therefore move other results ahead of ours? The city/state is last in the string on the title: Blue Widgets - Our Company in City, State Thanks for any insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0