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.
What heading tag to use on sidebars and footers
-
Hello,
I have some awareness of how to use H1, H2 and H3.
H1 only once per page as the main page heading.
H2's should be subheadings, H3's are sub-sub headings of the and so on.
This structure gives hierarchy and opportunities to use additional keywords in an order of priority.I can clearly understand how this would work in an article but what about other content on the page such as global/frequently repeated elements like sidebars and footers?
I see sites - and in particular, I have examed SEO focused sites - that use H3, H4 and H5 in these instances seemingly giving themselves scope to use at least H2 tags as part of the page content and break out of the structure hierarchy when dealing with sidebars and footers.
I suppose this could signal theses headings are sections of the page that are less relevant than the main article content but that is just an assumption. I don't know what is correct.
-
Thank you Chris
-
Kerry,
Don't worry about this too much. Putting a lot of thought into heading tags is probably more important to your own development of copy than it is to Google--once you get past the H1 tag, and even that is hardly a noticeable factor. Any well constructed copy is going to have the most important words and concepts at the beginning of the copy and your heading tags just reinforce that.
However, you don't necessarily want to think of lower tier headings as places to put "additional" "keywords". Think of them, maybe, as opportunities to use vocabulary that supports and broadens the concepts of your page's primary terms. I know the web is chock full of landing pages that organize their keywords that way but for the most part, I think that's fruitless for better search results and BORING for the reader.
These subheadings are your opportunity to distinguish your publication from the hoards of others when your audience first skims through your article. Think them through and use them to enhance the reader/user experience first and search engines somewhere after that.
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
-
H1 tag positioning impact
Hello, I am currently working with a dev team to develop a new site. We have designed the title tags to sit below a banner image on each page but the technical team are insisting the h1 title tags must come above the banner for maximum SEO impact. I am sceptical about this, can anybody please shed some light and/or share any up to date resource on this? I have attached a side by side wireframe to illustrate the pages with the h1 tags in both positions. Thank you! HnWcLTx
On-Page Optimization | | Popidev0 -
Issues with Multiple H1 tags on homepage?
Hi folks, My homepage has 3 identical H1 tags due to the fact that I have had to create individual hero images (with headings) for desktop, tablet and mobile. I couldn't get my theme to display the layout in exactly the way I wanted on each device without doing a specific hero image and tag for each device type. Does this have a major impact on my SEO? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Veevlimike
Mike.0 -
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 -
Difference in using dividers in TITLE TAG
Hi everyone, i know that dividers in title or even title tag doesnt have much of an impact on better rankings. I had great rankings for many keywords, not using dividers or using only one divider. However for better reading comprehension and usability, and also aesthetics i started to use the pipe as my main divider and other secondary dividers. I saw many pages drop in rankings vs other less competent and with less content pages. My format was as follows: Product Brand | Product description - Additional info or local info ie. Fiber Glass MBI | Insulation Batts for Home and Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation I changed the format for a handful of pages, and saw immediate results on rankings and traffic on those pages. Product Brand with Product Description - Additional Info ie. Fiber Glass MBI Insulation Batts for Commercial use - Acoustic and Thermal Insulation. Does it sound like something i should implement page wide. I personally like the aesthetics of the pipe as it gives a cleaner look, but the better rankings on the changed pages with using only one divider makes me think. Does it sound familiar, or its just a coincidence, Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | JesusD0 -
ALT tagging images with keyword. What is too much?
I was wondering about the best practices of ALT tags in images. Say if you have an eCommerce site and you're on a product page. This product page has 5 images of the same product (different images), should you give every image an Alt tag with the keyword for that page? Or, is that keyword stuffing, and it would actually be best practice be to provide alt tags on just one image?
On-Page Optimization | | John_Francis0 -
How bad is it going over 70 character for title tag length?
I know less than 70 is recommended. I am about to run a script to create some title tags and a few will be between 71-74. Is going just the few characters over ok until I can get in there and manually do them?
On-Page Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
URL best practices, use folders or not ?
Hi I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | 77Agency0 -
Repeat Keyword Phrase or Use Variations
Is it better to repeat a keyword phrase on a page's text that you have already used once, or to use a different variation of the keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0