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.
Is using a Href in Div OK?
-
Hi,
I was just wondering what your thoughts are on using a Href in a Div, which contains anchor text. We currently use the Href on the div, as opposed to just the anchor text as I want the whole div to be clickable as opposed to just the anchor text.
So currently I have:
Keword 1
Keyword 2Is this perfectly fine to do it like this as opposed to using <a tags="" ???<br="">I suppose there are various alternatives - if you must use the</a><a tag="" like:<="" p=""></a>
However I would assume a search engine is smart enought to know its the same thing???
Thanks
-
Many thanks - I'm going to have a serious word with my coders!!
-
As Dave shared, the W3C is the official organization for determining the validity of code. Generally speaking, you want your code to be valid.
If you want an area to be a click-able link try Maximise's suggestion.
-
Jesus - Thanks.
So your telling me that its totally invalud to:
1/. Wrap a href tag around a div tag.2/. Put a href tag as an atribute on a div tag.
If that is the case I'm going to have so serious words with my coders!!
-
Any time I have a question about valid HTML I go to the Source. W3C has an invaluable tool for HTML . Becoming familiar with this will help you always create clean code.
-
I would try and stay clear of doing this to be honest. It won't validate, older browsers may have problems with it and I'm not sure how search engines would treat it (they may not follow it). There are better ways to do it.
If you set your anchor tag to 'display:block' you can then set the height and width too. This way the whole div would be the link, not just the text.
-
Neither option is valid HTML. Browser behavior and crawler behavior would be unpredictable.
The code would be something like:
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
-
What Tools Should I Use To Investigate Damage to my website
I would like to know what tools I should use and how to investigate damage to my website in2town.co.uk I hired a person to do some work to my website but they damaged it. That person was on a freelance platform and was removed because of all the complaints made about them. They also put in backdoors on websites including mine and added content. I also had a second problem where my content was being stolen. My site always did well and had lots of keywords in the top five and ten, but now they are not even in the top 200. This happened in January and feb. When I write unique articles, they are not showing in Google and need to find what the problem is and how to fix it. Can anyone please help
Technical SEO | | blogwoman10 -
Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word
We had a spam injection a few months ago. We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google. I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them. Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410. I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/0 -
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | andrewddc1 -
Can you use Screaming Frog to find all instances of relative or absolute linking?
My client wants to pull every instance of an absolute URL on their site so that they can update them for an upcoming migration to HTTPS (the majority of the site uses relative linking). Is there a way to use the extraction tool in Screaming Frog to crawl one page at a time and extract every occurrence of _href="http://" _? I have gone back and forth between using an x-path extractor as well as a regex and have had no luck with either. Ex. X-path: //*[starts-with(@href, “http://”)][1] Ex. Regex: href=\”//
Technical SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
Canonical issues using Screaming Frog and other tools?
In the Directives tab within Screaming Frog, can anyone tell me what the difference between "canonicalised", "canonical", and "no canonical" means? They're found in the filter box. I see the data but am not sure how to interpret them. Which one of these would I check to find canonical issues within a website? Are there any other easy ways to identify canonical issues?
Technical SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
Would using javascript onclick functions to override href target be ok?
Hi all, I am currently working on a new search facility for me ecommerce site... it has very quickly dawned on me that this new facility is far better than my standard product pages - from a user point of view - i.e lots of product attributes for customers to find what they need faster, ability to compare products etc... All in all just better. BUT NO SEO VALUE!!! i want to use this search facility instead of my category/product pages... however as they are search pages i have "robots noindex them" and dont think its wise to change that... I have spoken to the developers of this software and they suggested i could use some javascript in the navigation to change the onlclick function to take the user to the search equivelant of the page... They said this way my normal pages are the ones that are still indexed by google etc, but the user has the benefit of using the improved search pages... This sounds perfect, however it also sounds a little deceptive... and i know google has loads of rules about these kinds of things, the last thing i want is to get any kind of penalty or any negative reaction from an SEO point of view... I am only considering this as it will improve the user experience on my website... Can any one advise if this is OK, or a "no no"... P.s for those wondering i use an "off the shelf" cart system and it would cost me an arm and a leg to have these features built into my actual category / product pages.
Technical SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
Redirect non-www if using canonical url?
I have setup my website to use canonical urls on each page to point to the page i wish Google to refer to. At the moment, my non-www domain name is not redirected to www domain. Is this required if i have setup the canonical urls? This is the tag i have on my index.php page rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com.au" /> If i browse to http://mydomain.com.au should the link juice pass to http://www.armourbackups.com.au? Will this solve duplicate content problems? Thanks
Technical SEO | | blakadz0 -
Using symbols in the html title of a webpage
If you a symbol in the title of a webpage will this dilute the keywords in the title
Technical SEO | | mickey11
thus making it rank worse in search engines here is an example <title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> versus <title><br /> ▶ Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> will the extra symbols count as words and thus the dilute the effectiveness of the Black Shoe Polish keyword. sort of making like 4 words instead 3. By the way, The reason to use a symbol is to make it stand on in the search engine results0