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.
Is using a subheading to introduce a section before the main heading bad for SEO?
-
I have noticed a popular trend in web design which involves sections of content being started with what looks to be smaller sub heading something like
<h3>
,<h4>
or<h5>
and then followed by a bigger heading<h2>
.My question is, what is the best way to deal with this visual structure and will having a structure like this hurt your SEO?
<h5>Contact Us</h5> <h2>Get started with your next project in minutes!<h2> <p>Some text here ...</p>
Here are some examples where the header structure is similar to above (smaller before bigger):
If that structure is bad for SEO, then it seems like a simple solution is to make it purely visual, mimicking a sub header with styling on a span or paragraph like these sites do:
- https://www.andrejilderda.nl/
- https://nightwatch.io/
- https://www.swingvy.com/
- https://www.figma.com/
My only concern with that approach is because your section sub heading is no longer an actual header you will miss out on ranking important and relevant keyword information for that section. Is this correct something to be worried about?
There is one last solution I stumbled upon that involves using headings for both but in reverse hierarchy so a
<h3>
is first but styled to be smaller, followed by a visually bigger<h4>
which provides the addition context.Anyone have thoughts, expertise or resources on the matter?
-
You will also find that you fail some accessibility standards (WCAG) if your heading structure tags are out of sequence. As GPainter pointed out, you really want to avoid styling your heading structure tags explicitly in your CSS if you want to be able to to style them differently in different usage scenarios.
Of course, for your pre-headings, you can just omit the structure tag entirely. You don't need all your important keywords to be contained in structure tags.
You'll want, ideally, just one H1 tag on the page and your most important keyword (or semantically related keywords) in that tag. If you can organize the structure of your page with lower-level heading tags after that, great. It does help accessibility too, just note that you shouldn't break the hierarchy by going out of sequence. But it's not a necessity to have multiple levels of heading tags after the h1.
-
Hello there,
Thee way i recommend doing is the next one.
H1 (one per page)
H2 (Name of the section, for example How to improve SEO)
H3 (Linkbuilding . it connects to the H2 of "how to improve SEO")
H3 (Blog post. it connects to the H2 too)
H3(Guest posting)and so on... Never never use more than an H1 on the same page and don't overused H2 as well.
I hope it's clear, let me know if i can help youy with something else.
-
Hey there, The best way (and the way I look at it) is like a book. The title of your page is the title, then from there you have chapters (H1) then perhaps sub-chapters (h2) and so forth. Each is relevant in how it breaks down but also wouldn't work the other way around so much.
Some developers are a tad lazy and they will code the size of an h tag so when creating the page instead of actually coding it to match a design they may well use the h tags to help as it 'looks' right but then you may be internally screaming at the way it works over the look. Welcome to SEO where you may be stuck between design and development!
H1 is 'meant to be more powerful and shouldn't be overused on a page as per the chapter guide I said use it sparingly but with more things SEO there is no golden rule and it's all little tweaks. Overall I wouldn't say its 'bad' just not 'optimized'.
Hope that helps or at least gives you something to think about.
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
Heading Tags (Specifically H2) being used within images
Hello, Mozzers I have a question regarding placement of heading tags. I have seen this asked a few times on the forum but some are from a couple years ago so wanted to get a more up to date answer regarding this. We want to add H2 tags across our site but our two options are to wrap images we are using as navigation on the top of the page, these are directly below our pages H1 tag and actually make sense. Example H1 title: Vehicles Images are specific brand logo with H2 being wrapped to pull the img alt: "Ford Vehicles" "Checvy vehicles" etc. The wrap would look something like this: I appreciate your time, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin443550 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Link Age as SEO factor?
Hi Guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
I have a client who ranks well within a competitive sector of the travel industry. They are planning CMS move which will involve changing from .cfm to .aspx We will be doing the standard redirects etc However Matt's statement here on 301 redirects got me thinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA&t=0m24s He says that basically you loose a bit of page rank when you do a 301 redirect. Now, we will be potentially redirecting 1000s of links and my thinking is 'a lot of a little, adds up to a lot' In other words, 1000s of redirects may have a big enough impact to loose some rankings in a very competitive and aggressive space. So recommended that we contact the sites who has the link highest value and ask them to manually change the links from cfm to aspx. This will then mean that there are no loss value as with a 301 redirect. -But now I have another dilemma which I'm unsure about. So the main question:
Is link age factor in rankings ? If I update any links, this will make said link new to Google, so if link age is a factor, would this also lessen the value passed initially?0