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.
Help Please! - Anchor Text in the Menu
-
Hi everyone,
I am a SEOMOZ newbie and I have been learning about SEO for a while now whilst working on my site - lockcity.co.uk - I already understood the importance of anchor text but was amazed to learn how google only count the anchor text used in the first link (http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text).
My questions are - does this rule still apply? and if so do the menus really count as the first link?
If I went on this approach, this would make my menus too long for e.g. on my 'Auto Locksmith' page, my targetted keywords are 'Auto Locksmith' but also the town keywords need to be included.
I really thought I had this covered on the home page by making sure the anchor text and alt text were keyword relevant to the link, but looks like Ive been missing out on an opportunity.
Our business is slightly complicated in that the 25 mile radius we cover includes 4 different regions - therefore I feel like I always have to get these keywords in as well to make sure we get traffic from our area.
Thanks for any advice you can give!
-
Thanks, I will change slightly, although wordpress is not visually displaying the H1 on the homepage - its hidden text - very strange!
Thanks for all your help!
-
Hi Abi
Not 100% sure of your question however:
Should H1 and H2 on the same page differ? I would say yes. It would look odd to a reader so perhaps odd to Google to.
If I've not answered the question you were after you can find my number on my profile.
The thing to be wary about is building a website for search engines - focus on the user needs and that the page 'reads and looks right'
All the best
Richard
-
My pleasure, Abi. Good luck with the work ahead!
-
Ahhhh I see - thanks so much. So Wordpress handles the home page differently to the subsequent pages ...
On the homepage it uses the "title of the site" as the H1 - which I just called 'Lock City' in the setup. Then it uses the page title as the H2 (which I thought was the H1)
On subsequent pages, it uses the page title as the H1 (great!)
So to get around the homepage problem, I have changed my site name to :
Expert Locksmiths Covering Bristol, Bath, South Gloucs, North Somerset, West Wiltshire
As this is hidden code, can I use the same text for my h2 of this page, or does it need to be unique?
Hope Im making sense! Thanks for your advice again!
-
HI Abi
Well done, much better and visually looks good to.
One thing though.... you still have two H1's on the home page. It looks like the rogue H1is related to your logo. Look around line 139 in the source code.
If you are a pro member try running the SEO web crawler (goto Research Tools). Its a good way to pick up other things. Otherwise drop me a line.
Enjoy!
Richard
-
Thanks very much Richard, I think I understand what you mean - can I pls ask you to take a final look at the page please?
Wordpress uses the title page of the document as H1 on subsequent pages but on the home page uses it as an H2 - very strange!
To avoid this, I have left the page title blank on the homepage and then manually entered an H1 in the body.
Really appreciate your help! Am I there now?
Many thanks, Abi
-
Hi Abi
Getting there.... but you should only have one H1 on a page (you've now got 2).
You can have multiple H2's and H3's and so on.
The H1 on your home page is important - should contain your keywords, be readable and to the point.
I would suggest 'Expert Locksmiths in Bristol Bath, South Gloucs, North Somerset and West Wiltshire'.
ie dropping the vertical spacer ' | '
Personally I would drop the 'Welcome to Lockcity' (as you currently have 3 headings) but add in a paragraph of standard text that starts with a welcome, mention what you do, the 1 hour pitch and location (as you are rather light on overall page copy,)
All the best
Richard
PS Nigel is my middle name but it was confusing so amended to Richard - see my profile for more
-
Thanks again Nigel - its funny as I had this conversation with Wordpress support - they told me not to worry about defining a H1 as wordpress already took care of this in the page title, but you are right, its generated as an H2, bearing this in mind, what do you think of this approach:
Welcome To Lock City! (Wordpress generates h2 from page title)
Expert Locksmiths Covering Bristol | Bath | South Gloucs | North Somerset |
West Wiltshire. (manually add h1)
Our Expert Locksmiths Can Be With You Within 1hr! (manually add another h2)
I have updated my home page (not sub pages) with this approach for you to see this in action.
Regards, Abi
-
My pleasure.
To answer your question - the post code does not need to be a link to the contact us page - just have a link called 'Contact us'
The contact us page should have tel, your full address and postcode and good idea to imbed a google map.
I have not tried it but there are some wordpress plugins that allow for multiple addresses in one map.
By the way on your home page your heading 'Looking for a expert locksmith? Welcome to Lock City.....' is currently a H2 - it should be a H1.
It could be cut back and more focused eg Expert Locksmiths covering Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire' ... even that is a mouthful so consider do you really need to mention all locations?
I would also suggest adding in a paragraph of home page copy - maybe this could include reference to the locations (so you can get the H1 back) and end with the 'Contact us' you asked about.
Also give your images alt text which makes reference to location. The urls for the images could also include a location.
Hope this helps
Nigel
-
Hi Miriam, thanks for confirming this - really useful advice!
-
Thanks so much for your helpful reply - one question about the copy for my postcode - does this need to be linked to the contact page or is text enough? Many thanks
-
Hi Abi,
We're glad to have you here! I want to be sure I'm understanding your question. Yes, that rule is still true about Google only counting the first link to a given document. I believe you are concerned that if your menu doesn't say Auto Locksmith Boston, you will somehow be losing out. While it's good to have optimized items in your menu, you don't want to look spammy. This would look spammy to me in a menu, and I bet it might to Google to:
Auto Locksmith Boston
Auto Locksmith Portsmouth
Auto Locksmith Truro
Auto Locksmith Plymouth
It's just too repetitive. So, what can you do? You can create a main page for your locksmith services in your city of location. The goal of this page will typically be to attain high LOCAL rankings. You can then create city landing pages for your service radius cities, but don't stamp them out cookie-cutter fashion. Find something unique to write about your involvement in those other cities, and don't just list them in the menu like I've shown above. Write something interesting, helpful and cool. The goal of these pages will typically be ORGANIC rankings, because you're unlikely to locally outrank competitors in neighboring cities who have their physical shops there.
So, you are a single entity offering this single service...Auto Locksmithing. That deserves one page. But you can write up your service cities, too, so long as what you're doing is unique and useful.
In sum, I recommend that you menu contains a link for Auto Locksmith Services, and then you have a separate area of the menu showcasing your work in different cities. I do not recommend making a menu like the one above.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Abi Don't worry about the left hand side or global navigation items - Google will focus its attention to the copy and links within the main body of the page. You are correct - if the body copy has two links going to the same location then only the first will count. Links nearer the top of the copy will get more link juice than those further down the page, so put the important stuff nearer the top. The more links you have the more diluted (less effect) those links will have so don't try and cover everything - for example if you sold many different types of cars you could have a 'BMW cars' link, then on the BMW cars page have links to the different models. Make sure you have copy referring to your location / zip / postcode. Have a contact us page with your full address and map. Make sure you have listings / links on local websites.... All the tells Google your location. Finally check Google Webmaster is targeted on your country. Best of luck Nigel
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
-
How best to wrap anchor tags around a product tile
Hi Say I am on a Product Listing page on ecommerce website and I have product tiles which contain images and name/price underneath them. Is it better to wrap the whole product tile (image and name/price) in an anchor tag (linking to their product page) or to wrap the image and the name/price underneath in anchor tags separately (linking to the product page) ? thanks
On-Page Optimization | Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 AM | jtiernanibm0 -
H1 text and Header Image Overlap?
I have images with text at the top of every page on my site. But no H1 or H tags at all. I would like the text on the image to be my H1 text. But I don't want to be repetitive. What should I do?
On-Page Optimization | Sep 3, 2020, 3:41 AM | Calligraphy0 -
Text that appears when hovering over navigation tabs
Hi, I have a Wordpress website and want to delete or edit the text that appears when I hover over my navigation tabs. In my case, the text is always the same as the page title, but I don't know where to edit it separately. When I change the title of a page that is in the navigation, the text that appears changes too. So the general setting is that this text is the same as the page title. Does somebody have an idea where to edit this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | Oct 23, 2018, 3:39 AM | Mat_C0 -
Does RSS Feed help to rank better in Google?
Hello, I heard RSS Feed helps in ranking. However, I am not sure if I should enable RSS Feed or not. Whenever I publish an article on my site , I see that many other websites have leeched my Feed and get's the same article I written published with a nofollow backlink to my website article. The worst part is that my article doesn't appear in Google search, but the website which copied my article gets ranked in Google. Although the article gets index on google (checked by using site:website.com). Although some articles show up after 24 hours by ranking higher from the sites which copied my article. Any idea what should I do? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | Jun 7, 2016, 1:12 PM | hakhan2010 -
How much text is recommended for a homepage?
I'm working with a client who is redesigning their site and the new design is very image heavy. Does anyone have any recommendations on the minimum amount of text the homepage should have so that it will rank (or at least not be penalized)? It's a site created by a known brand, but the site itself and URL are relatively new. Katherine
On-Page Optimization | Jun 23, 2015, 6:37 PM | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?
I got hit pretty badly by Panda 4.0 (1/3 of my traffic lost), and I'm fairly certain it was because Google had potentially indexed over 20 million pages from a site filtering piece of software and got done for duplicate content. I have since fixed that using URL Parameters and that 20 million is down to 2.7 million now and I have submitted a clean site map, so now I wait. I have just done a site relaunch and am trying to determine if there are any other issues. I run an online store, and I have a mega menu with well over 300 links in it - makes the user experience really quick and easy to jump exactly where you want - and then I have about 30 links in the footer. I know there's a 'no more than 100 links on a page' guideline for Moz, but does anyone know if Google is smart enough to see the same header / footer navigation structure on every page of a site and know it's navigation and not water down the rest of the links, or do I need to re-think and simplify my navigation? It's one of those things that's there for a user experience and now I'm worried that I'm being penalised. The site is www dot shopnaturally dot com dot au
On-Page Optimization | Jun 7, 2014, 12:58 AM | sparrowdog0 -
Internal Linking - in content vs navigation menu
Would like to get some thoughts on whether navigation menus or in-content links are best for internal linking, from an SEO standpoint. A few thoughts to get started with: For sites with a lot of content, you can have a navigation menu linking to your higher-level pages, then in-content links to deeper pages on your site. For smaller sites, this is not an option, as the navigation menu will probably link to all your important pages. You could add in-content links, but Google only counts the first link on the page, so the in-content links would be ignored if you'd already linked yp the page in your top nav menu. I can think of several possible reasons navigation menu links could be less desirable than in content links from a Google perspective. (They are sitewide boilerplate content without context.) If you setup your navigation structure based on what is best for the user, small sites don't have much wiggle room to optimize internal link structure, as all their money pages will be linked to from the top nav menu. Do you think Google prefers in content links to navigation menu links? If so, how do you get around the fact that for many sites, all their money pages are being linked to from their main navigation menu?
On-Page Optimization | Dec 5, 2012, 11:57 AM | AdamThompson0 -
Is there an SEO penalty for text that appears only in a pop-up box when you hover the mouse over an icon?
A client of mine wants to streamline the look of his web pages, taking some of the visible body copy and putting it into boxes that pop up when you hover the mouse over an icon. My understanding is that search engines will index this pop-up text. However, do they penalize pages that have text in pop-up boxes out of concern that those pages are spammy? In this case, the text and the page are perfectly legitimate e-commerce pages. Thanks for any insights you can offer.
On-Page Optimization | Apr 11, 2011, 7:46 PM | jimmartin_zoho.com0