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.
Sequence of heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc) important?
-
Meaning heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc) are a critical part of good on-page optimisation. Fair enough. It helps humans and bots make sense of a page's content.
3 questions regarding implementation of heading tags:
-
Should heading tags appear in sequence in the HTML code. I.e. H1 first, then H2 lower down, etc.?
-
Can the page contain more than one H1 tag?
-
Can the page contain multiple H2, H3, H4 tags?
-
-
Thanks!
I have some pages that contein h1, h2, h3 and h4. And I have other pages that dont't have h3 but they do have H2 and H4. Is it a seo mistake?
Thanks!
-
Yeah, should be fine.
-
I just listed about 6 H2 tags. That is ok right?
-
@vtialscom and @Barry Smith,
Thanks for your input. I agree with you both. Your resources are spot on Barry.
Cheers
-
-
Doesn't matter too much.
-
Yes.
Things to maybe think about though is HTML 5 and the
<header>tag for sections. Read - http://html5doctor.com/the-header-element/ - and - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/previewofhtml5
At the moment there will be some accessibility issues with screen readers when using multiple
s but that should get better.
Headers aren't a big ranking factor - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-five-least-important-ranking-factors - http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-6
A vast majority of the web isn't coded correctly and the above points to it not really mattering, however, it's worth thinking about your structure and still only really using one
if you can.
</header>
-
-
In my experience, the sequence of the H tags didn't matter at all, but if the H1 tag doesn't deserve to be on top of the other heading tags, I would suspect something may be wrong with your page layout. I don't recommend more than one H1 tag.per page. The H2, H3 and H4 tags are meant for sub headers. If you don't use the header tags as intended, your pages may be flagged as spam, so use cautiously. I have seen so many webmasters unwittingly abusing these tags, like by putting their brand name in a H1 tag on every single page.
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
-
Best site Template, Structure, etc. for SEO
If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd030 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
H1 tag- on home page - what is it best to include
is it best to have in the H1 tag 1. just our website address 2. combination of website address followed by short keywords about our website
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Is there any benefit to removing brand name from the title tag?
I just signed up for Moz recently, and have noticed that in my crawl errors, I have hundreds of issues with my title tag being too long. My business is selling prints for landscape/travel/nature photography, and I've built these pages dynamically to where the title tag for pages selling individual photos has the title of the photo for sale followed by a hyphen and then the brand name. The same goes for gallery pages "Gallery Name | Brand Name". Would it be worth it to shorten the title tags by removing the brand name from these pages? Or will that actually harm more than help? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | shannmg10 -
How to overcome blog page 1, 2, 3, etc having no or duplicate meta info?
As the above what is the best way to overcome having the same meta info on your blog pages (not blog posts) So if you have 25 blog posts per page once you exceed this number you then move onto a second blog page, then when you get to 50 you then move onto a 3rd blog page etc etc So if you have thousands f blog pages what is the best method to deal with this rather than having to write 100s of different meta titkes & descriptions? Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | webguru20141 -
Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?
Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Image titles and alt tags for multiple images
I'm hoping some of you may be able to help me understand the best way to optimize my image titles and alt tags for a specific situation. I'm working on an interior design website and they have hundreds of pictures. each of their projects has about 10 pictures. Is it best for me to us the key phrase in each title and tag? or is that to repetitive? here is what I mean: A project called "urban interior design" all images are of urban interior design, just different angles and features, so my initial idea is to just have each image title like this: Title: "urban interior design dinning area" Alt: "urban interior design dinning area view" Title: "urban interior design living room" Alt:"urban interior design living room couch view" Is this the best way or will it actually hurt my ranking with too much exact keyword use? Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | TBSEO0 -
Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?
To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>, often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name> We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on dupe content on those unique 300 pages. My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content? The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL? Any best practices we should know about?
On-Page Optimization | | editabletext0