Multiple H1s and Header Tags in Hero/Banner Images
-
I work on education websites, and our sites are being flagged by SEO and accessibility checkers for having multiple H1s.
The home pages have the site name as an h3 in the hero image, and an aspirational headline (think: Be Like Mike) as an H1. The sub-pages have two H1s: one on the site name in the banner image, and the other on the page title.
Note that the site name is very keyword-rich.
If we were to remove the H1 and H3 tags from the hero/banner images, would it do any SEO harm? At the same time, we’d rewrite the H1 on the home page to be more keyword-focused.
Any other options? I also read that it’s OK to have multiple H1s as long as it’s clear which H1 belongs to the heading area and which one belongs to the body area of the page.
Thanks in advance!
-
@uwpce one more thing to keep in mind - coherence of H1 with meta title and description tags. These two things are often disregarded by webmasters, but these are important to give Googlebot a better picture of what this page is about. So:
- one H1 tag
- this H1 tag corresponds to your meta title
- meta description is a keyword rich summary of the page that will help your CTR on Google.
-
@uwpce you should re-decentralize H tags, use only 1 H1 tag, the rest you should adjust to H2, H3, H4 accordingly.
-
@seoelevated thank you!
-
While there is some level of uncertainty about the impact of multiple H1 tags, there are several issues about the structure you describe. On the "sub-pages", if you have an H1 tag on the site name, that means the same H1 tag is used on a bunch of pages. This is something you want to avoid. Instead, develop a strategy of which pages you would like to target to rank for which search queries, and then use the page's primary query in the H1 tag.
The other issue I see in your current structure is that it sounds like you have heading tags potentially out of sequence. Accessibility checker tools will flag this as an issue, and indeed it can cause frustration for people with vision disabilities accessing your pages with screen readers. You want to make sure that you preserve a hierarchy where an H1 is above the H2 is above the H3, etc.
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
-
Use of the word Find in Title Tags
Hey, So i'm looking to make content that is optimized for Finding an injury lawyer in boston. The Phrase "Personal Injury Lawyers in Boston" get's a lot more searches than "Find Personal Injury Lawyers in Boston" but with the Find is it less competitive? The same thing goes for "Find lawyers in Boston" vs. "Lawyers in Boston." My question is, is it better to put the word FInd in front or not? Is there a downside?
On-Page Optimization | | RafeTLouis0 -
2 sets of meta tags in html
I use Wordpress for my business website...when I was looking at my html using "source" on Google, I noticed it looks like my site html has 2 sets of meta tags? www.seadwellers.com is my site
On-Page Optimization | | sdwellers
I do not know why, and I am not sure how to get into my html using Wordpress to delete one set?1 -
Title tags for deep pages
Just pondering what is current best practice for Title tags of pages buried deep within my website? Say I have a page about 'Cheese's of the world' and from that page there is a page about 'Cheshire Cheese' how would you suggest to structure title tags Would for example this be ok - Cheshire Cheese | Cheese's of the World | Brand name Or is this better - Cheshire Cheese | Brand name Just wondering as I'm redesigning my site currently and looking at everything! Ted PS - I like cheese 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
Site structure suggestions/feedback
I asked this on Reddit and got some some decent answers. I'm curious to see what the pro's of SEOmoz think. I've got a lead generation site for forklift parts--liftxparts.com. You can think of it similar to car parts, where we have sections for specific brands (e.x. Toyota forklift parts) and sections for specific categories (e.x. forklift filters). Right now, the site is structured in two main levels: the top level is a dozen or so brands (separate pages for Toyota forklift parts, Clark forklift parts, etc), and then the second level is the categories (separate pages for a dozen or so different categories like forklift filters, forklift engine parts, etc.).If you check out one of the pages, like Clark forklift parts for example (our top landing page)--liftxparts.com/clark-forklift-parts.html, you'll see that on the brand pages (they're all structured the same), we list all the different categories (with links to the same second level category pages) and "search" buttons. All pages point to the same lead capture form.This has been working pretty well--about 90% of visitors end up on our lead capture form, and a high percentage of those convert. We're working on increasing organic traffic now and I'm thinking our structure could use some improvement.Looking at the analytics, there are a lot more impressions for keywords like "clark forklift" than "clark forklift parts". One gap I've uncovered is while our average position, and by extension CTR and traffic, for phrases like "clark forklift parts" is quite good, it's not so good for broader and higher searched terms like "clark forklift". Should we add another level of hierarchy targeted to just general brands? So now we have content for clark forklift parts, but should we add a page for terms like "clark forklift"? Or should we just add some broader content to the existing brand pages? The pages are quite long already, I'm afraid adding more content to the bottom of the page isn't very functional. Our thinking is that we can increase average position for higher searched terms by adding content targeted to those terms. The question is how exactly to go about it and how to work it into our current site structure? Any feedback related to our site structure or even just related ideas about other ways to approach our goal of increasing organic traffic would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wisamabdulla0 -
Keyword Repetition in Title Tag
I am managing an online pharmacy website which has thousands of pages. I'm creating title tags for the pages that currently have automated tags.
On-Page Optimization | | pulseseo
I generally choose a word, find the next best alternative and merge them in the title.
Often this results in repetition of 2-3 words. Examples below:-
Title:- Skincare Treatment, Buy Skincare Products Discounted at Online Pharmacy Title:- Nebulisers, Buy Nebulisers UK Discounted at Online Pharmacy Title:- Electronic Dictionaries, Buy Best Electronic Dictionaries Discounted at Online Pharmacy Title:- Cat Skin Care, Buy Cat Skin Care Products Discounted at Online Pharmacy Are these OK or would Google penalize us for it?0 -
Multi-language on multiple domain
Hi, One of my clients has a big duplicate content issue on his site. He has two domain, on for each language (FR and EN) but each domain propose the two languages! Meaning you can reach every page with two URL. Example: http://www.brand-realestate.com/en/luxury/index.html (home page of the default site in english)
On-Page Optimization | | Pherogab
http://www.immobilier-brand.com/en/luxury/index.html (home page of the default site in french after clicking on the english link) Each of the two site has a default language and a link to the other one. When you click the link the page you are on just refresh and the URL stay the same with an added language parameter (ie:http://www.immobilier-brand.com/luxe/index.html?lang=english), then all the link in the navigation switch to the other language. So my question is, is it better to: Keep the two domain and instead of having the two languages on each send the traffic to the domain which has the targeted language by default (on the right page of course) Have both language on one domain and redirect all the pages from the other domain to this one (each page to the corresponding one) Just add a canonical URL on each alternative version of each domain Let me know if I'm clear. Thanks for the help. GaB0 -
Related keywords in title/H1 tag
Hi, I am trying to improve our rankings for pages with photos/images. For the title is it benificial to include keywords that are almost identical in nature? For example: "Brad Pitt Photos and Images" In Google trends photos and images are both commonly used words so including both seems like it would help. When I search for each one separately in Google (Brad Pitt Photos vs Brad Pitt Images) different sites are returned (except for the ones that include both image and photos keywords). I had read that Google knows that Images and Photos mean the same thing, but the search results do vary. I know stuffing all related combinations isn't good, but selective phrases seem to make a difference. Just want to verify if this makes sense. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | NicB10 -
H1 tags the same on all pages - problem?
I generally use wordpress as a CMS and have the H1 tag coded in the header.php include file. This results as it being the same in all page - I normally do something like Keyword - Company name and set the company logo as the background and move the text off screen using text indent (CSS). Is having the same on every page a bad thing? I might be tricky to change so their all unique.
On-Page Optimization | | JamesJacobs0