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  4. Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?

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Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?

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  • ciehmoz
    ciehmoz Subscriber last edited by Feb 15, 2022, 1:21 PM

    Will skipping <H> tags on a page have any impact on your SEO, e.g. skipping a <H2> so your page has a <H1> and then goes to a <H3>?

    Obviously a page must have a <H1>, but does it matter if you skip other headings?

    Tom.Capper 1 Reply Last reply Feb 17, 2022, 10:50 AM Reply Quote 0
    • TurkiyeSEO
      TurkiyeSEO last edited by Sep 30, 2023, 12:56 AM

      I recommend you read this content about title tags. English Content - Türkçe SEO'da başlık etiketleri I hope you benefit from it.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,2 years
      • Bestprice4u
        Bestprice4u last edited by Mar 6, 2022, 12:54 PM

        In general, well-arranged <H> tags suggest that Google bots will better understand the subject of the page, but quite often I come across websites with missing tags on the first page.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Khonalo
          Khonalo last edited by Mar 4, 2022, 1:54 PM

          It is a content issue. I have worked a lot with H2 and H3 headlines and see many SERP results with sitelinks with Headlines keywords. If you optimize a content with different parts and work with tables of contents, Google can recognize the structure understand your content and evaluate it. Some parts will be shown in the featured snippets as well or in FAQs. To say that they don't have any impact is wrong.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • GetSeoWebsite
            GetSeoWebsite last edited by Mar 4, 2022, 8:58 AM

            I think skipping <H> tags won't affect the ranking factor in SEO.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • davefitzrla
              davefitzrla last edited by Feb 28, 2022, 3:14 PM

              This depends on page structure and if you have any additional schema such as FAQs etc.

              Additional keywords within your H2/3/4 tags can be extremely useful but again it depends on keywords you are targeting and how natural these headings actually are.

              It's also worth thinking about the other purposes of H tags.

              Even though they may or may not have an affect on SEO - H tags help with accessibility software such as screen readers to make sense of your content.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • ciehmoz
                ciehmoz Subscriber last edited by Feb 23, 2022, 5:54 PM

                Thank you @Tom-Capper and @pau4ner, this is really helpful. I guess it used to have an impact on SEO but things have changed and they're no longer as important as they were.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • pau4ner
                  pau4ner last edited by Feb 18, 2022, 5:11 PM

                  In my experience and opinion, it won't have any impact at all. I've ranked pages with one H1, a bunch of H3 and no H2. Headlines are useful to organize content for users, they don't really have direct SEO purposes (although they can affect it indirectly, as a better organized content will improve user satisfaction).

                  Although not a headline, something I would never skip is <title> tag (even though Google can create one/rewrite the existing one).

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Tom.Capper
                    Tom.Capper Subject Expert @ciehmoz last edited by Feb 17, 2022, 10:50 AM

                    @ciehmoz

                    From an SEO perspective, I doubt you'd see any material impact.

                    Even skipping the <H1> isn't awful as long as the document's overall structure and hierarchy remains clear. See this experiment we ran a while back - https://moz.com/blog/h1-seo-experiment

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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