Search visibility of website that only uses H2 tags - will not having H1 damage my visibility?
-
Excuse the basic question. I host my domain and website on Squarespace. I use a specific theme and after doing a site crawl of my site Moz picked up that Pages and Blog posts 'Missing or Invalid H1' tags (450 issues!). I discovered that my Squarespace theme only using H2 tags.
Is this a serious issue that affects my search visibility? What would you recommend that I do to fix this, if anything? I'm starting some SEO and lnikbuilding, but wanted to see if this is an issue that I need to consider.
Thanks!!!!
-
Obviously. But from my experience there was'nt really an upside to it. Basicly saying i might as well create a website with only H2 instead of the H1 till H6.
-
There are too many other factors to be able to do a before and after test.
It's still the right thing to do for visitor ease-of-use and legibility.
There is no downside to doing it - only upside.
-
Hi Sean.
We tested this on a website that recieves 1500 clicks a day by google. We waited pretty much months and saw no difference in "performance". Read my initial response to this:
-
Well, It is not a big issues these days. Google is smart enough. I totally agree with martin in this. Secondly, your title of the post would automatically be in H1 which would fulfill the requirements of having H1 tag in the post.
However, the thing which matters a lot is the on-page SEO of your site. On-page SEO of your website should be perfect.
Like your main keyword should be in H2, and all other headings which you consider important must be in H3 or H4 whatever you want as per your website's design. Moreover, do not forget to add Schema ( Google Structure Data to your site ).
I have done on-page SEO of my website properly, and have achieved good rankings after the google core may update.
-
Ive build a nummerous amount of websites over the last few years. Bin in an argument with a client who's pretty much into marketing and seo himself. H1 or H3 was missing, but H2 was widely used. We've tested this out and our conclusion was this:
It really dont matter if you have good content + quality incoming links. Hell even quality links rank sites that are stuffed with copy content. We saw no difference in months when switched to a more structured H1/H2/H3. To this day good quality links or a well optimized incoming link pattern still beats everything of the above. No matter if you have a slow loading site or completely failing W3C validator etc.
I had the same 'warning' in Moz as well; but alot of the pages still are within the top 3 or so so i dont really think this is an issue for it not to rank.
-
Why would you not have the main heading of your pages be an H1?
Yes, your rankings will suffer though you will never know by how much unless you change them to H1 and measure the difference - though the difference will be affected by other things you do and overall traffic, so it's never an apples-to-apples comparison.
H1 headings have more SEO weight than any other content on the page including H2 and other headings. That is why Moz reports missing H1 headings.
Plus, you want to use H2, H3, and other headings to break up long content (>400 words or so) so visitors can scan the page to see if it's relevant and worth reading.
-
Hi, using a proper site structure is necessary for the health of websites. If you need more stress on your keyword and want to understand your content better to google then you need to have proper site structure. Follow this site structure, I found it very helpful. https://vrltrackings.com/
-
I agree with Martijn,
These days, heading tags don't do much. More important, I'd say, are the actual words you use in those lines that contain heading tags. The beginning of the first like (like where an h1 tag would be) should include your most important words. The beginning of the following paragraph (like where a page intro/summery following an h1 tag would be) should round out/expand on that vocabulary. The following headings and paragraphs should reinforce the vocabulary of the first paragraph.
Too often, the fluff that people produce for website copy gives them little to no relevance to their desired theme/topic.
-
Hi Julio,
The fact that your site is 'just' missing H1s and likely only using H2 shouldn't be too big of an issue. I'd say that Google is smart enough to notice that you basically would use the H2 instead of the H1 everywhere. However, I would make sure that the use of the H2 is not overdoing it. If you have 6171 H2s on your page then obviously its value is minimal. It's in the end, all about the proper use of these tags, and in that case, it shouldn't matter if there is no use of the H1 tag.
Martijn.
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
-
What steps should I take to address damage to my website, including malware insertion and content theft?
The question revolves around the steps required to mitigate damage inflicted upon a website, encompassing issues such as malware insertion and content theft. It prompts a comprehensive exploration of the necessary actions to take in response to these challenges. The inquirer seeks guidance on how to effectively address the damage, indicating a desire for practical solutions and strategies to restore and safeguard their website's integrity. By posing this question, the individual demonstrates an awareness of the severity of the situation and a readiness to undertake corrective measures.
Technical SEO | | ralphbaer0 -
Canonical tag not working
I have a weebly site and I put the canonical tag in the header code but the moz crawler still says that I'm missing the canonical tag. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | ctpolarbears0 -
Website indexing issues
My website is being indexed with both https - https with www. and no leader at all. example. https//www.example.com and https//example.com and example.com 3 different versions are being indexed. How would I begin resolving this? Hosting?
Technical SEO | | DigitalRipples0 -
Do H2 tags carry more weight than h4 tags?
Of course H tags are key signals for relevance in search. Does an h2 tag send a significantly "louder" signal than an h4 tag?
Technical SEO | | aj6130 -
Google using descriptions from other websites instead of site's own meta description
In the last month or so, Google has started displaying a description under links to my home page in its search results that doesn't actually come from my site. I have a meta description tag in place and for a very limited set of keywords, that description is displayed, but for the majority of results, it's displaying a description that appears on Alexa.com and a handful of other sites that seem to have copied Alexa's listing, e.g. similarsites.com. The problem is, the description from these other sites isn't particularly descriptive and mentions a service that we no longer provide. So my questions are: Why is Google doing this? Surely that's broken behaviour. How do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | antdesign0 -
Do You Have To Have Access to Website Code to Use Open Graph
I am not a website programmer and all of our websites are in Wordpress. I never change the coding on the backend. Is this a necessity if one wants to use Open Graph?
Technical SEO | | dahnyogaworks0 -
Does using tags instead of " " good for SEO purposes?
I'm currently using <pr>tags for paragraphs and came across an article that said it is better for search engines to see the</pr> tag than
Technical SEO | | ibex
tag to separate paragraphs.0 -
How do you measure content on a website?
I never thought of this question before. Maybe because i didn't focus myself on content but only on optimizing existing content from clients. So how do you measure the content on a specific page?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0