"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
-
Google Search Console issue: "This is how Googlebot saw the page" showing part of page being covered up
Hi everyone! Kind of a weird question here but I'll ask and see if anyone else has seen this: In Google Search Console when I do a fetch and render request for a specific site, the fetch and blocked resources all look A-OK. However, in the render, there's a large grey box (background of navigation) that covers up a significant amount of what is on the page. Attaching a screenshot. You can see the text start peeking out below (had to trim for confidentiality reasons). But behind that block of grey IS text. And text that apparently in the fetch part Googlebot does see and can crawl. My question: is this an issue? Should I be concerned about this visual look? Or no? Never have experienced an issue like that. I will say - trying to make a play at a featured snippet and can't seem to have Google display this page's information, despite it being the first result and the query showing a featured snippet of a result #4. I know that it isn't guaranteed for the #1 result but wonder if this has anything to do with why it isn't showing one. VmIqgFB.png
On-Page Optimization | | ChristianMKG0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Titling and H1 Tag Question
What to do if you have hundreds of thousands of a particular product. Comic Books for example. Is it ok to have the words Comic Book in the title and H1 tag as long as it is qualified? For example, if I have the following as both the Title tag and the H1 tag. Comic Book - Spider Man Versus Wolverine Comic Book - Silver Surfer Goes Home to Visit Mom. Comic Book - Superman Gets a New Kitten Comic Book - Wonder Woman is More Wonderful Than You Know As of now, I have been doing it this way, but only in the title tag. However, Google has been using my H1 tag as my title, so in the search results, I am only getting: "Superman Gets a New Kitten" And I am afraid that that is leaving out important info for searchers, especially qualifying that the product is a Comic Book and if someone is searching for a Comic Book, I need that to return. But I don't want any 'more' trouble from the Panda. Again, this will be hundreds of thousands of products. Thanks for your help! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Subdomain vs subdirectory for store
Hello, The following services site nlpca.com has a store at shop.nlpca.com Would the store be stronger if it was at nlpca.com/store (in a subfolder) and included in the main navigation? The moz bar suggests not but I just want to make sure. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW1 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
Footer and SEO
Hi All... We have a client who wants to really minimize and simply their website. They want to remove some of the footer info. Obviously we do not want to remove any contact or address but they would like to remove the footer menu system. I have read various things about it NOT effecting SEO and that it is there for user navigation and usability. Thoughts? Opinions? zach
On-Page Optimization | | Group20 -
Hotspot area for SEO
Hi, we have an online store: http://www.redwrappings.com.au/ There's been a debate regarding which area is recognised to be the most important place/hotspot for SEO: Free delivery van area (top left panel) OR Top menu navigation Given that if you look at the page html source code, the top navigation loads last and the free delivery fan area is the first one to be read in the html source code. We did this because we want the body page content (h1 & text content) to be read first by search engine robot & also the body can load faster for the user. Is this the right thing to do or we better off load the top navigation first? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Essentia0 -
The Better Title to Use?
Hello Mozers- I am targeting the keywords "liposuction scottsdale", "liposuction phoenix", "liposuction mesa", "liposuction arizona". Out of the following two Titles below, one would you consider the better one? And Why? I am leaning towards the second example. If you have any more ideas that would be great. 1). Tummy Tuck Scottsdale, Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona 2).Tummy Tuck Scottsdale | Tummy Tuck Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona. Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0