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.
Does it matter what text you wrap in an H1 tag?
-
Typically H1 tags are reserved for page headings, i.e. on a blog post the blog post title is very often the pages H1, or top-level heading as the W3C puts it.
On the SEOmoz home page they currently have "SEO Software." as their H1 tag, which seems perfectly reasonable and to me fits the W3C criteria.
However, what if the primary keyword for SEOmoz was "seo community" so they decided to wrap just those two words in the sentence that follows on their home page and maintain the existing style of the words "seo community" with CSS. (see attachment)
Are there any arguments against doing that?
Would Google be able to detect this? If so, would Google care?
I do believe the overall importance of the H1 tag has lessened to a degree, however I still believe they are valuable to an extent and would love to hear anyone's thoughts.
-
The same H1 rule goes for all other headers.
Headers are headers, mixing them in with the text content isn't very helpful in a user perspective.
A quick tip is to try to add questions to the h2 to keep the text SEO and user friendly.
So let's rephrase this into a h2 question:
Interested in commercial landscaping design?
We're the ones to call!
Call us at 1-866-236-7263 or contact us by email.
Hope I could help
Best,
Gustav
-
Great Q&A here - very clear and helpful. Now let me expand the question to H2 tags. If I keep the H1 as a proper heading on a page, but embed an H2 tag in a sentence is that considered acceptable SEO tactics?
Here's the example - as the 3rd paragraph of a page:
If you’re interested in
commercial landscaping design
, we’re the ones to call. Call us at 1-866-236-7263 or contact us by email.
What do you think?
-
Ok, now I understand what you meant
I agreee, In my opinion that's not a good way to use an H1 tag.
It would still work for rankings but I would also consider it as trying to cheat google.
It's always better to look at the sentence and restructure it and make it more of a selling copy text, for example:
The largest SEO community!
SEOmoz Pro combines campaign-based monitoring, actionable recommendations, and premium access to the web's largest seo community <a href="">- try it free for 30 days!</a>.
/ Gustav
-
Hey Gustav, thanks for the response. As a quick follow up for clarity on my end. Here's an example of what I was referring to using the SEOmoz home page as an example again. Would it be okay from your perspective to do the following?
SEOmoz Pro combines campaign-based monitoring, actionable recommendations, and premium access to the web's largest
SEO community
- try it free for 30 days.
Again, assuming that primary keyword for SEOmoz is "seo community." To me this is an effort to try and fool Google into thinking that SEO community is your top-level heading when in reality it's just a section of a sentence. Would you agree?
-
Hi! to specify: Yes, the words in the H1 tag matters
-
Hi!
The H1 is always important, I've tried several test with the h1 and title tag to see if the correlation still works and improve rankings. In my experience it does.
As long as you don't use css to modify the h1 so that another element of the text below is actually bigger or resemble an h1 it should be fine. Don't try to fool Google by changing the appeareance of the h1 to much(use common sense), remember you can always use an H2 tag below if it makes the content better.
Remember the H1 should always be unique for the page and should not be the same on several pages.
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 Bold text for keywords
Hello I am updating an old e-commerce website of mine and many keywords are in bold - shall I remove the bold tag or keep them there? This is for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Do WooCommerce product tags effect SEO?
I'm just curious if I need these product tags and if they impact in any way at all SEO? - whether that be positively or negatively. on1iRin
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Duplicate anchor text vs poor relevance in internal links
We're writing a number of blog posts, all based around a particular head-term (call it "women's widgets"). Each post will be centered around a different long-tail keyword (e.g. "women's brandA widgets", "women's brandB widgets", "women's type1 widgets", etc.). We want to link from the blog posts back to the main "women's widgets" category-level page on our site. Should we: a) Use the words "women's widgets" in each blog post and link that to the "women's widgets" page? This would be the most relevant, but it also seems like using the same anchor text on all of the posts, and linking to the main page, is not good since Google doesn't like seeing the same exact anchor text all the time, right? b) Link the long-tail keyword ("women's brandA widgets") to the main "women's widgets" page? That would solve the anchor text duplication issue, but then the anchor text doesn't seem relevant to the page being linked to (it might never mention "brandA" on that main page at all), and I think it would also hurt the blog post's chances of ranking for the long-tail keyword since we're basically saying that there's a more relevant page for that keyword somewhere else (i.e. you shouldn't link out from a page using the phrase you're trying to optimize that page for). c) Link a nearby word/phrase instead? For example, we could say "Trust Companyname.com for your women's widget needs", and link "Companyname.com" to the "women's widget" page. By proximity to the keyword phrase, that may help a bit, but again the relevancy of the anchor text to the page being linked to is fairly low. I'd hate to have a bunch of "click here", "read this" or "company name" anchor texts being used, just in the name of not overusing the head-term in the anchor text. Are we just missing something, or misunderstanding Google's preferences? What do you do when you don't want to overuse a keyword in anchor text, but you still want to link to a main category-level page using the head-term in order to tell Google that that is the most relevant, best page for that keyword? Is anchor text duplication more of a problem for external backlinks, and less of an issue for internal interlinking? Do you have a different suggestion, other than what I outlined above? Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | BandLeader
John0 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
Do alt tags count towards on page keyword density?
Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
H1 tag in the footer?
Quick question: I have been scouring SEOMoz.org along with webmaster forums looking for an answer, but we have a person who insists that the H1 tag be located in the Footer. I feel that is is fundamentally wrong because it is not the intent of the H1 tag, and I do not believe it is a best practice. That being said would we see what little value the H1 tag has disappear if we put it in the footer, would we be penalized, or am I being too vanilla by wanting to keep it in the Title position?
On-Page Optimization | | travelclickseo0 -
How long should anchor text be? Best practice for anchor text length?
site: http://www.cerritosnissan.com/index.htm On the bottom of this homepage there is an seo content area, basically right under where it says "orange county nissan" welcomes you. The internal links in this area are very long and I'm wondering why they would do this - is there any benefit to making anchor text longer? The longer the anchor text, the less each part of that anchor text passes link juice. For example, for a page about their reviews, the anchor text of the link is "See what Cerritos Nissan customers have to say about their experience at this great Orange County Nissan Dealership.". If I would have done this the anchor text would be "Cerritos Nissan Reviews" or just plain "reviews" as the anchor text. Why would they be using such long keywords as anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
0