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.
How crucial are H1 tags and descriptions in wordpress categories?
-
Hi all
Trying to improve SEO for my (mostly) local site, www.nectarbridge.com, and recently got back on Moz Pro account. First crawl of my site by Moz, a manageable number of issues that I've mostly sorted, but the category with the largest number of problems is missing or invalid
tags.
My content pages and blog posts are not missing the tags. It's category, archives, etc., including multiple pages, ex:
https://www.nectarbridge.com/category/blog/page/4/
A smaller number of pages are being flagged by Moz as missing descriptions, and they are also category pages and the like.
So the question is - how hard should I pursue fixing these issues? I'm using the divi theme, which apparently doesn't display the category description by default (if it did, that would kill two birds with one stone). There is a fix to add the category description, but before I get into that I'm trying to discern whether this issue really matters greatly to SEO or if I should spend that time just working on more content.
-
H1 tags are very important aspect of SEO, because they give a clear indication what products or services are being sold on that page. So do make sure save you have say a WordPress website, that you add H1 title to each page. Even if you have had your website built by a web designer, and they haven't added H1 titles, often, you simply add these titles later on, its a piece of cake, especially if you have a WordPress website.
-
H1 tags are important because they tell Google precisely what the page is about, but again, these need to be written in a white-hat way. We done this for a Bristol summerhouse company, and we got that business onto page one.
-
I analyzed my website: techiewiz.com and it says I only have 1 h1 tag despite the fact that my post titles are all h1.
Can anyone teach me how to solve this, please?
I think h1 are a must include for good on-page seo but maybe it is my theme function or WordPress acting funny.
I already provided the link so anyone who wants to run the SEO audit can see what I am talking about.
I need Google to read my h1 as post title and not h2 as post title.
-
Thanks Vijay.
-
Hi Gary,
I reviewed your complete website and I really appreciate the kind of SEO efforts ( including Blog) that you have put in. As for the H1 issue for the category page, you can fix it from the changes suggested on the link you have posted on your reply. I would like to add some suggestions, that might help you in the long run. As don suggested to fix URL structure, you can start by taking reference from here https://moz.com/learn/seo/url .
- The blog title can be optimized from Blog - Nector Bridge to something relevant like Blog - Business Consulting (local area name) .
- Your website looks good, but it can be improved by adding/changing some aesthetic elements on the pages (like pacing between elements etc.), which will help it look better and also help on the UI front.
- The H1 and H2 tags are going to be your best friends, optimize all pages effectively for the tags and writing effective titles under these tags.
- Your google pagespeed is coming at 34/100 for Mobile, kindly get it fixed.
- I see that your website is mainly optimized for the keyword 'Business Consulting', it would be a good idea to add local area name along with the keyword for local SEO, this helps in more ways than just local listing benefits. Give it a try.
Keep up with the good work on the SEO and Blog. Let me know if you need any kind of help.
Regards,
Vijay
-
In my view yes, you should fix the issues. The key about good seo - is not "only pulling certain levers" but where feasible doing everything right. We find when we do all the basics right the results sometimes take care of themselves. It lets you sleep easier as well. Instead of thinking "what if?".
H1's influence rankings - I have implemented some that have had a small impact, however, most do not. There is impact enough to optmise. The H1 is also great for usability, which can increase conversions. This is a ranking factor - time on page, bounce rate etc. It could increase your quality score if using Adwords. Additionally if a customer clicks on a search result which has a consistent message via URL, Title tag and H1 it is confirmation to click-through to a page and builds trust on topic - hopefully good content follows.
For the visually impaired marking up your HTML with header tags is also appropriate to facilitate screen readers.
I would also review your URL structure. If you want rankings then they again in my view should be consistent with the page offering.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Missing description + Missing or invalid H1
So I have more than 1.4K Meta Data Issues that states that there is "Missing Description" together with "Missing or invalid H1" and I have spent so many hours trying to figure this out, still no luck.. The problem seems to be to add a description in a specific tag, for example: https://www.troyhoffman.com/blog/tag/courage The platform I use (Squarespace) doesn't allow me to add a description to e specific tag. Any ideas on how I can fix this problems? 5TBfuDj
Moz Pro | | DaniellaSerquen1 -
My "tag" pages are showing up as duplicate content. Is this harmful?
Hi. I ran a Moz sitecrawl. I see "Yes" under "Duplicate Page Content" for each of my tag pages. Is this harmful? If so, how do I fix it? This is a Wordpress site. Tags are used in both the blog and ecommerce sections of the site. Ecommerce is a very small portion. Thank you. | |
Moz Pro | | dlmilli1 -
Canonical URLs all show trailing slash on main site pages - using Yoast SEO for Wordpress - how to correct
We are using Yoast for a number of our sites. We use naked domain as the canonical. I have noticed in the header tags that all our sites show the canonical URLs as having a trailing slash: Example: http;//foxspizzajc.com, when I look at the source code, it shows the canonical as http;//foxspizzajc.com/ Of course, it is much more likely that all sites that link to us will not use the trailing slash - so preferably we do not want that to be the canonical - among other reasons. Does this need to be fixed so the trailing slash is removed? I cannot see how to do this in Yoast SEO or in Permalinks structure for Wordpress. Sorry for my ignorance. Thanks for any help.
Moz Pro | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing1 -
How to remove 404 pages wordpress
I used the crawl tool and it return a 404 error for several pages that I no longer have published in Wordpress. They must still be on the server somewhere? Do you know how to remove them? I think they are not a file on the server like an html file since Wordpress uses databases? I figure that getting rid of the 404 errors will improve SEO is this correct? Thanks, David
Moz Pro | | DJDavid0 -
In alt tag of a image can we use #hashtag or domain.com ? Is that good SEO or not allowed ?
Some of the Google Search shows a title has a hashtag of an article, which contain keyword and while tweeting them, the title which has a hashtag automatically very good used for getting traffic to the blog. And other one, can we use the hash tag inside the alt attribute ? Or our domain name with .com in it. Like Google.com or #Google ?
Moz Pro | | Esaky0 -
Adding new categories to my website and getting them ranked
Hi, I currently run a website and have added a couple of new categories lately. The website is Planes Trains Automobiles Co UK. For example I want to add "Planes for sale" as a new category. What is the best way to go about this? Will each aircraft added add content therefore ranking? I don't want to approach an SEO company yet as the service would be free for the time being? Thanks
Moz Pro | | PlanesTrainsAutos0 -
Some questions on Canonical tag AND 301 redirect
Hi everyone, I'm new here - always loved SEOMoz and glad to be part of the Pro community now. I have 2 questions regarding the Canonical URL tag. Some background info: We used to run an OsCommerce store, and recently migrated to Magento. In doing so, we right away created 301 redirects of the old category pages (OsCommerce) to the new category pages (Magento) via the Magento admin. Example: www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
Moz Pro | | yacpro13
301 redicrected to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html In Magento admin, we have enabled the Canonical tag for all product and category pages. Here's how Magento sets up the Canonical tag: The URL of interest which we want to rank is:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html However Magento sets up the canonical tag on this page to point to:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html When using the SEOMoz On Page Report Card, it pick this up as an error because the Canonical tag is pointing to a different URL. However, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the URL being pointed to
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
has a 301 redirect to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html
which is the URL we wan to rank. So because we set up a 301 redirect of the old-page to the new-page, on the new-page the canonical tag points to the old-page. Question 1)
What are you opinions on this? Do you think this method of setting up the Canonical tag is acceptable? Second question... We use pagination for category pages, so if we have 50 products in one category, we would have 5 pages of 10 products. The URL's would be: www.example.com/new-widget-category.html (which is the SAME as ?p=1)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5 Now ALL the URLs above have the canonical tag set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" /> However, the content of each page (page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is different because different products are displayed. So far most what I read regarding the Canonical tag is that it is used for pages that have the same content but different URLs. I would hope that Google would combine the content of all 5 pages and view the result as a single URL www.example.com/new-widget-category Question 2) Is using the canonical tag appropriate in the case described above? Thanks !0 -
Title tag on sitemap.xml
The SEO moz is showing an error on one of the sites within my SE Moz account campaign under Crawl Diagnostics: Title tag missing or empty. No problem here but the file associated with this issue is sitemap.xml and that just dose't look right as as far as I know xml files are title tag free. I've searched around and i've been able only to confirm my initial thought that sitemap.xml dose't use a title tag .. like any other xml. is this an issue ? (the error that is) or i should let it slide. can it be fixed ? if yes, how ? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | eyepaq1