Faking headings, good or bad?
-
Recently i got into a discussion with someone regarding the use of headings on an e-commerce website.
i had used headings whenever a heading was used in the design, they all marked the subject of the given section.
For example: The sidebar contains items for filtering products. Each filter had a
containing the name of the filter, like colors or brands.
The discussion i had was about whether the use of headings was appropiate because the words contained within the heading had nothing to do with the main subject of the page (Soccer in this case).
The advice from the SEO agency was to replace the headings with a different html element like a div or span and style this so it looks like tge heading in the design.
What do you guys think?
-
Given they were
tags and not something more powerful like an
, I'm not sure how detrimental it would've been, however, I think your SEO agency is right to change the HTML element to something else.
How the
tags were being used was outside their initial design (page hierarchy and design), as davebuts pointed out above.
-
I agree with your SEO agency.
Heading tags should be used to provide a hierarchy for the content on a page, not just to format text.
Heading tags should be avoided in page templates where they are not relevant in demonstrating the hierarchy of content on a page - ie. in the header, main navigation, sidebars and footer.
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
-
Why ranks my site so bad?
hello together, i think, that you read questions like this very often, but i hope someone has some good ideas for me. https://goo.gl/3iOmcqy with the keyword "sophos sg 210" we rank very bad. But i don't know why 😞 We have trust elements, a very good "avergage time on page" unique content... But i don't know, what can we make better 😞 Thx you so much
On-Page Optimization | | enbitcon0 -
Would you consider this title to be keyword stuffing or bad?
A competitor uses the following format for all of their meta titles: [Store Name] Voucher Codes, Cashback & Discount Codes | [Website Name] They do vary their titles slightly, depending on which keywords are searched for, for the particular store. What do you think about this title? I'm torn between it looking a little 'stuffy' but them also getting across the point that their page offers all of that.
On-Page Optimization | | vickluque0 -
Is moving text out of the main body field a bad idea for SEO?
Hi, I manage this WordPress website http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk I've been looking for ways to improve the product template and have come up with the following http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk/product/the-alhambra-fireplace/ - you can see how this compares to the old template http://www.the-fireplace-company.co.uk/product/the-burlington-fireplace/ Basically I've moved the description copy for the product from the main body to an alternative field and disabled the reviews tab below the product images to give a more compact feel and better use of the space available in my humble opinion! The client approves too. However I was just about the change all the other products to match this one - but suddenly thought is is wise to move all text out of the main body just to improve the look? I wondered what impact this might have on search. Any pointers would be welcomed. One course of action might be to find a new theme that's just a little more accommodating! Or to develop this theme further to ensure the main body copy is displayed where I want it to be? Regards to the Moz community - thanks for reading. Nathan
On-Page Optimization | | nathangdavidson0 -
Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice?
Hi GuysMy father is currently using a programmer to build his new site. Knowing a little about SEO etc, I was a little suspicious of the work carried out. **Anyone with good programming and SEO knowledge, please offer your advice!**This page http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/gallery-range-wood-flooring/ which is soon to be http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/ you'll see has a number of different products. The products on this particular page have been built into colour categories like thishttp://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/lights-greys http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/darks-blacks This is fine. Eventually when we add to our selection of woods, we'll easily segment each product into "colour categories" for users to easily navigate to. My question is - Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice? Please see below... Visible URL - http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns/cipressa/Below is the permalink seen in Word Press for this page also.Permalink: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/and in the Word Press snippet shows the same permalink urlCipressa | Engineered Brown Wood | The Wood Gallerieswww.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/ Buy Cipressa Engineered Brown Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Provides an Exceptional Foundation for Elegant Décor, Extravagant .. If this is completely ok and has no negative search impact - then I'm happy. If not what should I advise to my programmer to do? Your help would be very much appreciated. Regards Faye
On-Page Optimization | | Faye2340 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Is content aggregation good SEO?
I didn't see this topic specifically addressed here: what's the current thinking on using content aggregation for SEO purposes? I'll use flavors.me as an example. Flavors.me lets you set up a domain that pulls in content from a variety of services (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, etc.). There's also a limited ability to publish unique content as well. So let's say that we've got MyDomain.com set up, and most of the content is being drawn in from other services. So there's blog posts from WordPress.com, videos from YouTube, a photo gallery from Flickr, etc. How would Google look at this scenario? Is MyDomain.com simply scraped content from the other (more authoritative) sources? Is the aggregated content perceived to "belong" to MyDomain.com or not? And most importantly, if you're aggregating a lot of content related to Topic X, will this content aggregation help MyDomain.com rank for Topic X? Looking forward to the community's thoughts. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | GOODSIR0 -
Good Site Navigation verses Success
I have been experimenting with the number of links on our pages verses the number of hits we get. Success seems to be tied to having hundreds of links on a page verses ease of navigation. We have a research company that sells research on educational topics. Last November I decided to divide our category of literature research topics into 10 different subtopics and redistribute the links to the subtopic pages. The main literature research page had over 800 links on it. It was one of our top performing pages. I was hoping that by spreading the links out in logical categories i could distribute the wealth and have better navigation for the user. Now after 6 months the traffic to that page has dropped 800% and the sub-pages have only gained a very minimal percentage. Overall, the hits in the literature genre have dropped from 560 per month to around 80. Ouch! I thought Google would love this strategy, as it reduced page load time, links on a page and made the navigation logical and easier to see all available options. Not the case. Question is: Should I keep the subpages but go back and put all the links back on the main literature page, putting it back up to 800 links? Should I get rid of the subpages, because the links will all be on the main literature page if I move them? Any advice is appreciated! Karen
On-Page Optimization | | eworld0 -
Is this type of Internal Linking Bad or Good for my Site????
A while back we were schooled on "Link Silos" a reputable SEO source.... and one suggestion was to create links from our product pages (bottom of link silo), back up to it's higher category page. So for example... Home > Tools > Hair Dryers > "Product" On the subject product... we chose to link back to "Hair Dryers" and then "Andis" (that product's brand page. You can see this at the below product page. We added the links below "Related Categories" in the product description. http://www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Colorwaves-Tourmaline-Hair-Dryer-Blue-Green-p/an1dry0295.htm We are now thinking this may be just too much as there is already a "bread crumb" trail at the top of the product page. These are in essence links back up to higher categories. Any input on these types of links would be appreciated.. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop1