Multiple H1 tags are OK according to developer. I have my doubts. Please advise...
-
Hi,
My very well known and widely respected developer is using multiple H1 tags I see - they like using them in their code and they argue multiple H1s conform with HTML5 standards. They are resisting a recode to one H1 tag per page.
However, I know this is clearly an issue in Bing, so I don't want to risk it with Google. Any thoughts on whether it's best to avoid multiple H1 tags in Google (any evidence and reasoning would be great - I can then put that to my developer...)
Many thanks for your help, Luke
-
I understand. Good reminder.
-
Hi AWC - this is tangential to the topic, but important for Q+A and Moz community participation in general.
Please, in the future, work to be as generous and empathetic in replies as possible. This community is meant to be a haven from many of the nastier corners of the web and while your comment was not excessively insulting, it wasn't kind either. Contributions both big and small are welcome here, as are opinions.
If we're going to maintain the amazing community here, we have to be mindful about the impacts of negativity. Thanks for understanding.
-
I think Ryan's point about HTML5 is good to keep in mind, but the problem is that we don't have any great guidance on what Google thinks about HTML5 right now, at least at this level of detail. They're waiting for the standard to evolve into common practice, just like the rest of us. I suspect, though, that if HTML5 is changing the rules, they may scale back their judgment.
-
To be fair, how do you know that they're "spammy", "abusive", or "irrelevant"? I've seen people just use them badly - for example, for CSS styling. Is it a best practice? No. Would I do it? No. Will it have major SEO implications in 2012? Probably not.
I've seen instances where an H1 was used badly, but not in a deliberately spammy or even irrelevant way. Developers often treat tags as much more interchangeable than they should.
-
Nobody said it would tank a site nor was it asked if it would tank a site. Until the H1 goes by way of meta keywords, the use of it will have some relevance and in my opinion should be used properly.
Of 200 plus algorithm elements, there are undoubtedly plenty of others that are "not a big deal" but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them correctly.
Whew, there sure has been a lot of time spent on something that's "not a big deal."
-
No, Google just beat the value out of the H1 to the point its on life support..
I agree. That's why having 18 of them on one of your pages probably isn't going to tank your site.
I am not advocating more than one H1 tag... just sayin' that I don't think that this is a big deal.
-
I agree. I've been in touch about the developer's work now. It's simply not good practice, yet. I've heard that Bing is more definite in its advice on H1 than Google.
-
No, Google just beat the value out of the H1 to the point its on life support.
Sorry Egol, but if the innocents had no regard for SEO they wouldn't be putting a tag on it.
-
Keep in mind that some people innocently use
tags for formatting text. These folks are building websites because they have a message to share without any regard to SEO. And some of these websites pull an enormous amount of traffic because they are built by content area experts who write with enthusiasm and verve.
I don't think that google is pulling out a stick to beat these people.
-
Hi Luke,
As you can tell, it touched a nerve. I was looking for the moz link to a thread regarding this same issue and Alan (one of the Gurus) said multiple H1's can affect engines differently and if I remember correctly he made reference to a negative response from Bing.
Until H1's achieve the lofty status of meta keywords, I will continue to treat them with some importance and approach them with best practice.
I'll listen for the rumbling coming from your direction.
Good luck.
-
Thanks for feedback AWCthreads - tis a good question - ho hum - he's just not using them right. I've had this problem with people putting in hidden tags too. They're just not taking Google, etc., into account. Almost screamed as I counted through them yesterday hee hee.
-
Thanks Jennifer. Yup, doing all that too. I'm paying him on contract and part of the prob is if he's using H1s so much it could end up in a lot of expensive re-programming. I'm gonna stamp my feet I think. I often wonder whether anyone's tested the impact of such heavy use of H1s. We need an SEO Moz testing lab ;-).
Thanks for your input too AWCthreads Some good points there...
-
Hi Jennifer, If you're going to weigh in, you've got to bring more substance than a regurgitation of Rand's posts on the value of H1 and how SEO time is best spent. When my staff runs an SEOmoz on page optimization report and gets flagged for having 2 H1's on the page (which happened several times today), I didn't say, "Worrying about the H1's on the page is not that big of a deal." Nor did I say, "Make sure the site is crawlable and all those other high priority things." I described a bit of history of the H1, its purpose and best practice considering its value in optimization which is to say 1 is best, 2 is acceptable and more than 2 is not necessary nor is is best practice. I also added that if it wasn't of some importance, Rand certainly wouldn't have it as an element in his research tools. Having 18 H1's on a page doesn't seem excessive. It is what it is, which is asinine. That rumbling coming from down the hall is not thunder from above, but me having a visit with a developer and anyone else who thinks 18 H1's is acceptable or seemingly excessive.
-
18 H1s definitely seems excessive, however in the grand scheme of things this would be a much lesser priority in my book than many other things. I mean if this is the biggest problem, then you're doing quite well. If you're wondering if the developer is doing the right things overall, that might be a different question. I just don't think that worrying about the H1s on the page is that big of a deal. I'd make sure the site is crawlable and all those other high priority things before I spent too much time on this.
-
I was doing real well until I read this: "Ive noticed the developer's used about 18 per page" Multiple H1's are one thing, but excessive, spammy, abusive, irrelevant H1's are another.
Why in the world is he even bothering with an H1 tag if he's got 18 of them? Ask him, "What are you telling the bots with your H1's - 18 different things or the same thing 18 different times?" No wonder the value of the tag has declined so much since its inception. That volume of H1's is what Cutt's is referring to in his 2009 video.
Our CMS site auto-generates a header H1 tag when enabling optimization for mCommerce. So, when I put an H1 on the page for categories and products, the page has multiple H1's. I'd like to have one but will live with 2.
-
That definitely sounds like too many H1 tags.
On my pages I have two: one for the site name and the second for the page title. The site name H1 is in my
<header>section, while the other is in mysection. I wouldn't advice using more than 1 per section.</header>
-
Thanks David, Ryan, EGOL, Nakul - really useful feedback
I think I'm erring on the side of caution really, quite simply because any risk is too much risk. I'll read up on HTML5 some more Ryan as it sounds like it's changing thing a great deal. I've noticed the developer's used about 18 per page, for all headings. which seems quite strange, and possibly incorrect even in HTML5. I mean, blog posts headings to tweet headings to... just about every heading.
-
I would look at the pages and ask myself the question: Does this page really have more then 1 "Primary" heading ? Can you do 1 primary heading and then sub-headings ? If all such options are exhausted and the only way to address the structure and layout of the page is by having multiple H1 Tags...do it. But I would do it as a last resort or when it's absolutely necessary and it makes sense from a user perspective.
-
I have multiple H1 tags on some of my pages and don't see any problem. Just telling my observations.
If this is your site and you have concerns about multiple H1s.... maybe the developer needs to know that he is being paid by the hour and you are being paid on the basis of results. So if he wants any more hours he better not be messing with your results.
-
I had a conversation about this very topic recently, here is the advice I got:
Headings get totally different treatment in HTML5, we have to throw away everything we knew about this from HTML4/XHTML.
In earlier versions of HTML we only had headings (h1 - h6), there are no other sectioning elements at all. That is why we had to be very careful about our usage of the h1 tag, and there was always controversy regarding it usage.
In HTML5 the sectioning is much more powerful. We have a whole bunch of new elements for sectioning and the algorithm used to generate the outline is far more complex, and flexible. In short, it no longer matters how many h1 tags we have on a page.
We must still adhere to a structured approach and be careful to generate the right outline (one that reflects the proper structure of the document), and this is what this theme does.
To conclude and clarify, in HTML5 it doesn't matter if there is multiple h1 tags on a page, what matters is how they are used in conjunction with the other sectioning elements, and that the outline produced represents the correct structure of the document.
-
Best practices is to only use 1 h1 tag per page. You can see a video from mat cutts here mentioning you can have more if done correctly - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM
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
-
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Multiple E-commerce website
Following is a scenario where we plan to have a single database and different sites pulling product information from this. There will be a primary site with all the products listed and then there will be other category based website with the same products. All transactions will happen on respective website. The common factor will be products and its information. Our question is should we have different item numbers for the same product listed on two websites or they can be the same.?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | promodirect
e.g.
Website A: Product - Blue Shoes and item number '123'
Product page url will be: websitea.com/blueshoes-123.html Website B: Product - Blue Shoes and item number '123' or should the item# should be unique e.g. 'B123'
Product page url will be: websiteb.com/blueshoes-123.html
or
If item number is unique the product page url will be: websiteb.com/blueshoes-B123.html Please advise what is the best way forward.0 -
Small help with title tags
Hello all, this is my first question on Moz, i can see lots of people use it. Overall great community. I have a question, about title tags, ive done some keyword re-searches via Adwords-Keyword planner. And i need help combining the title tag for my pages. This are my most searched keywords:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | legendz
Main keyword - ACE Online Related keywords : Private Server Top 100 Download Gameplay Guide Now ive combined my title :
ACE Online Private Server - Top 100, Download, Gameplay, Guide Do you think this is good writen title or something its bad, i really cant deside. Please help0 -
Multiple stores for the same niche
I started developing a new niche of products in my country about 3 years ago. That's when I opened my first store. Everything went fine, until a year ago, when someone I thought was a friend secretly stole my idea and made his own competing store. I was pretty upset when I caught him and decided to make it as difficult as possible for him, so I made another 4 stores, trying to get him as low as possible in the search results. The new sites have similar products (although not 100% identical), slightly different titles, images and prices. They look different and are built on different e-commerce platforms. They are all hosted on the same server, have roughly the same backlinks, use the same Google account for Analytics, have the same support phone numbers etc etc. I wasn't thinking that I'm doing something fishy, so I didn't try to hide anything. Trouble is that those sites, after doing fine for a few months, dropped like bricks in the search results, almost to the point that they can't be found at all. At the moment, the only site that ranks relatively well is the original one and a couple of secondary pages with no importance from one of the other sites. How did this happen? Does Google have something against this practice? Did they take action by themselves when they realized that I was trying to monopolize this niche, or did my competitor report me for some kind of webspam? And more importantly, what do I do now? Do I shutdown all but my original site and 301 redirect users to it from the others? Can I report my competitor for engaging in the same practice? (He fought back and now he has 3-4 sites, some of which still rank kind of OKish, also he has no idea about web development, SEO or marketing, he just crudely copies what I do and is slowly but surely starting to do better than me).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pandronic0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Virus on wordpress second time PLEASE HELP
hello Mattew i have a big problem on the web is the second time that a virus attacked the wordpress of my web. That is why i am being very busy trying to solve it fisrt time i upload a backup before the attack, but now if infected again All de webs that are positioned on google for ejemple if you look for anithing on google "estetica of propdental.com" it redirects to page http://medicaresue.com can you help me please is the second time and i am losing lots of traffic and positions on google thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
SEO best practice: Use tags for SEO purpose? To add or not to add to Sitemap?
Hi Moz community, New to the Moz community and hopefully first post/comment of many to come. I am somewhat new to the industry and have a question that I would like to ask and get your opinions on. It is most likely something that is a very simple answer, but here goes: I have a website that is for a local moving company (so small amounts of traffic and very few pages) that was built on Wordpress... I was told when I first started that I should create tags for some of the cities serviced in the area. I did so and tagged the first blog post to each tag. Turned out to be about 12-15 tags, which in turn created 12-15 additional pages. These tags are listed in the footer area of each page. There are less than 20 pages in the website excluding the tags. Now, I know that each of these pages are showing as duplicate content. To me, this just does not seem like best practices to me. For someone quite new to the industry, what would you suggest I do in order to best deal with this situation. Should I even keep the tags? Should I keep and not index? Should I add/remove from site map? Thanks in advance for any help and I look forward to being a long time member of SEOMoz.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BWrightTLM0 -
Please help? unique penguin problem with a blogger template
**Can any one help? The problem: **There is a free blogger template on this site http://btemplates.com/2012/blogger-template-crystalweb/ that has a anchor text link to our site using the keyword "wholesale" in the footer, that is the main course of our site being hit with a penguin penalty.**The story so far:**On the 24th April our website dropped out of the serps for our main keywords, traffic has been down 90% ever since, we are a small family run business that relies on the inter-net and goggle for our site to work. Goggle organic serps is about 30% of our turnover and have already had no choice to let 3 people go, problem now is we are left with Me, my Dad and Mum, Both my Brothers and nephew and my wife and my brothers wife so unless we can turn this around I can see us going bankrupt.**What I have done so far:**After the 24th I have learnt a lot about S.E.O , and managed to remove 99% of all bad/spammy links and have now come to a dead end. I have been promoting what we do as a company and promoting our blog over the last 4 months and also built a great twitter/facebook following with lots of re-tweets and shares which we have made some good sales from. We have re-designed most parts of our website and managed to up the conversion rate by 300% We have worked on all aspects of our website to make sure we have little/no duplicate content , have worked on ways to speed up the site and fixed most dead links/404 problems.<var id="yiv904548185yui-ie-cursor"></var>**Now onto our main problem:**After a few weeks of removing links I found a blogger page that kept coming up with the same link, after some detective work I found the template was originally designed by http://www.deluxetemplates.com/ after a few emails we found out that someone paid deluxetemplates to add the link to the site, I'm guessing it was a S.E.O. company we used for 2 years, but they did not admit to this and could not help. A guy called Klodian from deluxtemplates was really helpful and helped remove from his site, also he agreed to a cost of $250 to remove all the pictures on his server to force the blogger's to update, this is what the template from deluxtemplates now looks like vozconuncion.blogspot.co.uk .Now this was only helping fix this issue a small bit as a different site called btemplates also used the template and added it to there website as a free download and hosted the template pictures on there servers. I have emailed a few times, I have sent them twitter messages and also added messages to lots of there templates on there site in the hope they can help, I have also contacted the owner directly on his goggle+1 page but no reply. This template is being downloaded once or twice a day, with no way to get hold of the blogger's using it. As a last resort I offered the owner $1000 to help me remove the template but still no luck.Does anyone have any ideas how to resolve? we are willing to pay to resolve this and will do what ever needs to be done.Thank-you for taking the time to read.Karl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0