"Heading 1" vs. "Title" Style for SEO
-
In Word, you can specify "Heading 1" text which Google presumably treats the same as an
HTML tag. Is there any benefit in using the "Title" style? Is it the equivalent of a web page's title?
-
No problem.
-
Beauty. Thanks Mike.
-
This article from Google Webmasters Central should solve it for you, Supporting Rel Canonical HTTP Headers
Mike
-
Thanks for the info! However, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to offer both web content as well as PDFs. Is there a way to offer a downloadable PDF but canonicalize it to the web content to avoid duplicate content issues?
-
Here is some additional great info on optimizing PDFs:
-
Ah! I see what you are saying.
No. The "title" style will not help you; however, H1-H6 in a PDF will still help you, along with the file name.
You can specify the Title, Author, and Subject on the Description tab under File > Properties in Acrobat.
That should help you optimize your PDF.
Mike
-
I've been using PDFs because it is the way we want to make downloadable content available for our users. In the past I created webpage versions of our content as well but I am worried about duplicate content issues.
The optimal scenario would be to have both the PDF and webpage but canonicalize the PDF to the page. Is that possible? Right now, I am only aware of the ability to pass canonicalization to the PDF from a webpage, not the other way around.
-
Yes this does make more sense but now I have to tell you how anti-PDF I am.
I absolutely hate PDFs. Sorry. Not trying to be rude and I'm sure you have your reasons, but is there anyway you can make this a webpage instead? What are the reasons, if you don't mind me asking.
Optimizing a PDF is not something I can advise you on but I can tell you that they don't work with things like H1 tags and hypertext markup...
-
Please see my response to Jesse. Hopefully I made things clear
-
I think there is some confusion. I am talking about using Word to create a PDF to be placed on our site. The PDFs rank fairly well but I want to be sure we are optimizing the titles with proper tags if possible.
Does that make more sense now?
So basically my question is: is there a way to define a line of text in a PDF / word doc to indicate to Google that it is the "h1" tag on the page and give it greater emphasis?
-
You will want to have your heading 1 style configured to use an
tag. You would not want to use <heading1>or any variation... you'd want to use
.
If you are using a WYSIWYG editor and you copy text from Word that is using a Heading 1 style, the code version should interpret that as
- which Google should see the code equivalent of heading 1.
Make sense?
Mike</heading1>
-
if the html tag is style="heading1" and it's adding something in there like that ( that wouldn't do anything, but as an example) then no. The tag needs to read
for google to register it as an h1 tag.
Honestly this would all be resolved if you weren't using Word. Why are you using Word?
-
That does make sense. Is that the case for the "Heading 1" style as well?
It makes sense to me that Google would look for the "Heading 1" style much like it would an
tag.
-
Hi David,
No there isn't any benefit.
The "Title" style is just that, a style. It will occur in the body section of your HTML and will not impact how Google ranks your page. It just changes the physical attributes of the text to look nice.
The "Title" tag is an element in HTML. It occurs in the head section of your HTML and will impact how Google ranks your page. This is one of the more powerful, if not the most powerful, on-page SEO elements.
Does that make sense?
Mike
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
-
Product Descriptions (SEO)
Hello, I sell products relating to wood. Although the products vary, I like to give description of the wood type for the customers who might not be familiar with it. Will it hurt my rankings to give the same descriptions for the same wood type as long as the majority of the description is different? Here is an example of the layout: 1. Different description for different products 2. The same short description for the same wood types (seen throughout multiple pages) Hopefully my question makes sense.
On-Page Optimization | | mattl992 -
The effect of having CR LF HT commands in a <title>tag</title>
Hello. I am looking at a customer site with a CMS system that is controlling the population of the meta TITLE Currently it has the TITLE set as this <title>(CR)(LF)<br />(HT)Site Details REMOVED - Customer name REMOVED(CR)(LF)<br /></title> Naturally, we would prefer it to be <title>Site Details REMOVED - Customer name REMOVED</title> What affect would these commands have in the title! Google shows their title when you Google the company website... so I guess it can see it .... but GA "Top Site Content" widget shows it as blank ? Any ideas? Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | BinaryTris0 -
Should stop words be used in titles? I'm aiming for natural title structure.
I have fully optimized on-page SEO for the following keyword (not really the one I use, but it can serve as an example): -personal driver in los angeles Even though "in" is a stop word, I prefer to have a natural (non-robotic) structure for the title - I do this by including "in". I believe that "personal driver los angeles" is too spammy and too robotic. Is this a good or a bad thing?
On-Page Optimization | | zorsto0 -
How about this "onpage overoptimisation" everybody is talking about? Are the on-page optimisation reports still to be used?
Are the on-page optimisation reports still to be used? If we do check all factors we risk penalization because of latest Panda update?
On-Page Optimization | | MugurCosminFrunzetti0 -
Does anyone know an "updated" all in one cheat cheat for on page SEO
howdy guys, after panda, and penguin, i wanted to know if anyone has any good references for a cheat sheet that has ALL the on page SEO factors like title tag, image tags, H1-H6, etc, the basics, but since the zoo got loose I dont know if things have changed for on page SEO. For example what is the optimal KW density we should be using etc. i found this list : http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm but it seems to be a bit outdated, if someone can share something similar to this list but something more recent, like a few weeks old, i think that would help the community out a great bunch! thanks guys
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Rel="canonical" on home page?
I'm using wordpress and the all in one seo pack with the canonical option checked. As I understand it the rel="canonical" tag should be added to pages that are duplicate or similar to tell google that another page (one without the rel="canonical" tag) is the correct one as the url in the tag is pointing google towards it. Why then does the all in one seo pack add rel="canonical" to every page on my site including the home page? Isn't that confusing for google?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Duplicate Page Title
Hi Guys, First off, it's an honour to be a part of this awesome community. I'm using WordPress and getting top 3 rankings for great keywords and I'm very excited, however my page titles are in this format "keyword optimised title here - site name here" eg: "This is my keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is another keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is a longtail keyword - this is the name of my blog" SEOMoz is reporting errors because of duplicate page title tags due to the "this is the name of my blog" being in every page title. Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks in advance and keep up the great work! Cheers, Troy.
On-Page Optimization | | TroyDean710 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0