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.
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
-
Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??
-
Hi Rich,
Physically having the H2 above the H1 is fine. Like Schwaab and Chris say, you won't be penalized for it - it is more a matter of logical hierarchy on your page.
I am guessing you are doing this because you don't have access to the CSS or do not want to modify the stylesheet and you like the look/design of a page with the H2 above the H1 - this is fine, just not best practice necessarily.
Typically your page should be structured like:
- most important - headline for the page
- second most important - sub heading for sections, related to
- third most important - headline for sections, related to
etc... implementing
-
tags where correct semantically.
You don't "need" to have an
on every page if it doesn't make sense (for instance if one page was just a continued section or whatever). If you wanted, you could use the
and not include the
.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
I don't believe that will be a problem, unless you're manipulating the tags so that the H1 or H2 tags do not contain actual visible headings. Just out of curiosity what is the context of needing an H2 above an H1?
-Chris Wilson
-
You won't be penalized for it, but why would you need to? I would think about if what ever is appearing above the H1 really needs to be in an H2 tag.
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
-
Adding Schema and No index tags via GTM
If we were to deploy schema and noindex tags to our website via Google tag manager, would these tags be viewed and respected by other search engines?
Technical SEO | Sep 22, 2018, 6:41 PM | GregLB0 -
Product meta tags are not updating in my Magneto website!
I need some help! For some reason, each time I update the product meta tags in my Magento website, it doesn't change on the current website? Could someone help me understand why that is?
Technical SEO | Sep 9, 2015, 11:26 AM | One2OneDigital0 -
Do H2 tags carry more weight than h4 tags?
Of course H tags are key signals for relevance in search. Does an h2 tag send a significantly "louder" signal than an h4 tag?
Technical SEO | Aug 4, 2014, 7:07 PM | aj6130 -
Can a CMS affect SEO?
As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value. However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored. the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages. hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it? Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great. thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | Nov 27, 2013, 10:37 AM | TeamacPaints0 -
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | Mar 12, 2013, 4:36 PM | EcomLkwd0 -
Two different canonical tags on one page
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page). I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out? The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference? Any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | Aug 10, 2012, 3:17 PM | ShearingsGroup0 -
Should H1 tags include location?
I have an IT services company that is based out of Denver. In the past I always used Denver in the H1 tag like this "Denver IT Support & Managed Services" or "Denver Data Center Solutions" I know that H tags are not that important any more but I still want to put them on each page. My question is in a post panda world do those look too spammy? Should I not include Denver on each page. I have about 25 service pages that I was going to do this for. Each page will be different because of the service but I was going to include Denver on each page. On that same note how, I normally put never in the title for each page. Should I rethink this also? Obvisouly I want to rank on Denver and the service. Any help on this would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | Jul 31, 2012, 3:22 AM | ZiaTG0 -
What happens when you put an image in an H1 tag?
I am currently updating some H1 tags for my site but the tags are generated automatically by the text that is entered into a field on our content manager software. However because we need an image in this area as well, the entire field including the code for the image is surrounded by an H1 tag. Is this bad for SEO?
Technical SEO | Mar 31, 2012, 11:31 PM | eVacStore0