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.
Using H3-4 tags in the footer or sidebars: good or not?
-
Howdy SEOmoz fans!
Is it considered a good / bad / neutral practice to include H tags in the footer, as a mean to group a few links?
Take http://www.seomoz.org/ for instance:
- Voted Best SEO Tool 2010! = H2
- Looking for SEO consulting? = H3
- Product and Tools = H3- Company = H3
- etc.
I often see the same principle applied to sidebars.
I feel like because they don't contribute to the actual content structure and because they are repeated from page to page, we should avoid them, but I have nothing to back my intuition.[+] Perhaps they are helpful for usability (screen readers) and thin added value (i.e. category names that carry more weight than if they weren't headers).
What do you think?
Thanks for your time.
-
Hey Daniel,
Most footers are simply a series of horizontal lists of ancillary pages or popular pages, along with the odd copyrighted brand name a year and possibly a link to the Web designer/developer or SEO company. Therefore I see heading tags as overkill.
That said, I have seen more elaborate footers that contain a lot of useful information where adding headings to group the information could be useful.
Dan
-
Hi Daniel,
Any reason you would be less inclined to use heading tags in the footer vs sidebars?
Thanks
-
Hey Daniel,
I would say they offer a neutral benefit for the following reasons...
- Firstly, by nature sidebars are often replicated across multiple page. They are items that require high visibility and therefore can appear on all pages.
- From a usability perspective, it is good to keep consistency. Styling your H1-6 tags helps as visual aids to attract the users gaze to key parts of the content.
- If a potion of a page is duplicate content, it typically would not affect the rest of the content on the site from ranking. Although I would imagine malicious use of duplicate content could.
My preference would be to use lower Heading tags (say H4,5,6) as not to dilute the use of the primary heading tags, but ultimate this duplicated sidebar is going to offer little SEO benefit from a content perspective. Sidebars can promote other SEO benefits though such as internal linking and usability.
This can apply to the footer area as well, although I would be less inclined to use heading tags (I am sure there are exceptions)
Hope this helps,
Dan
-
In your example they do not appear to be headings, so bad. It looks like a
- would be more appropriate.
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
-
What heading tag to use on sidebars and footers
Hello, I have some awareness of how to use H1, H2 and H3.
On-Page Optimization | | kowston
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.0 -
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 -
Using Schema markup for Feefo reviews
I am a little confused about whether or not it is ok to use Schema markup with reviews collected through Feefo. We use Feefo to collect reviews from our customers and these get displayed on our website. We get service ratings as well as product ratings through Feefo. My question is: Is it ok to use Schema markup for these? I would have thought they would fall under 3rd party reviews, but this article from the Feefo website seems to suggest that it would be ok to use markup in the way they recommend. Can anyone confirm how Google handles review markup like this? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
How Good or Bad is having a blog feed(s) on the homepage?
Hello everyone, I was wondering if I can get some different opinion about having a blog feed on the homepage. Image, title, excerpt I have several feeds on mine which I do not believe it hurts and has helped my rankings but I wanted some superior SEO brains to weigh in. https://www.brightvessel.com Is it good for SEO? When would it be bad? How many posts would be considered too much? On my blog, have the most recent posts which have some of the same feeds. Which is making me question the duplicated content. https://www.brightvessel.com/blog/ Thanks! Judd
On-Page Optimization | | brightvessel0 -
SEO can id and class be used in H1?
Can ID and class be used in my H1 tag. I realize best case would be to change it, but it's going to require a change order from the ecommerce company to fix their sloppy code. Will this hurt seo? Example:
On-Page Optimization | | K-WINTER0 -
Is it ok to use the H1 tag for bullet points?
Our search results page doesn't have a typical H1 tag because adding a true header would take up space unnecessarily. Therefore, we've assigned the h1 tag to be the breadcrumb. As filters are applied, the breadcrumb grows to include these filters. This breadcrumb is coded as bullet points, even though they're not the typical style of bullet points. Here's a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/AjGC9iAYR3 For example, the breadcrumb: Home >> NYC Social Media Classes >> Adult >> Manhattan is currently coded as: | |
On-Page Optimization | | mevseo
| | * class="first"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/">Home |
| | * <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/nyc/classes/social-media/age-adults/neighborhood-manhattan" class="Selected">Search results |
| | |
| | |
| | id="cat_social-media" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setCategory('social-media')" /> |
| | # style="font-size: 12px; display: inline;">NYC Social Media Classes |
| | <label <span="">for</label>="cat_social-media"> |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="age_adults" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setAge('adults')" /><label <span="">for</label>="age_adults">Adults</nobr> |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="nbhd_manhattan" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setNeighborhood('manhattan')" /><label <span="">for</label>="nbhd_manhattan">Manhattan</nobr> |
| | |
| | | Right now that H1 tag just relates to 'NYC Social media classes', but we'd like to expand it to include both 'Manhattan' & 'Adults' - would that be ok? And if so, would it be better to put the tag before and after the tag?0 -
Footer copyright year statement. good or bad
Hi, I see a lot of sites with a year copyright statment in the footer like Copyright 2011 - DomainName.com or Copyright 2002 - 2012 - Domainname.com since new year a lot of sites (founded before 2011) still have 2011 instead of 2012 in the footer. Do you think the date gives any signals to google? Should someone update the date or remove it completely? I would tend to remove it completely since the page date for google is submitted in the HTTP header. But maybe the info could be of any use for the user. Any best practices?
On-Page Optimization | | Autoschieber0