Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Is using a subheading to introduce a section before the main heading bad for SEO?

    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.

    Is using a subheading to introduce a section before the main heading bad for SEO?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    4
    2118
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • si.analytics
      si.analytics Subscriber last edited by

      I have noticed a popular trend in web design which involves sections of content being started with what looks to be smaller sub heading something like <h3>, <h4> or <h5> and then followed by a bigger heading <h2>.

      My question is, what is the best way to deal with this visual structure and will having a structure like this hurt your SEO?

      <h5>Contact Us</h5>
      <h2>Get started with your next project in minutes!<h2>
      <p>Some text here ...</p>
      

      Here are some examples where the header structure is similar to above (smaller before bigger):

      • https://www.snappr.com/
      • https://form.taxi/
      • https://fluz.app/

      If that structure is bad for SEO, then it seems like a simple solution is to make it purely visual, mimicking a sub header with styling on a span or paragraph like these sites do:

      • https://www.andrejilderda.nl/
      • https://nightwatch.io/
      • https://www.swingvy.com/
      • https://www.figma.com/

      My only concern with that approach is because your section sub heading is no longer an actual header you will miss out on ranking important and relevant keyword information for that section. Is this correct something to be worried about?

      There is one last solution I stumbled upon that involves using headings for both but in reverse hierarchy so a <h3> is first but styled to be smaller, followed by a visually bigger <h4> which provides the addition context.

      • https://avocode.com/

      Anyone have thoughts, expertise or resources on the matter?

      GPainter 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • seoelevated
        seoelevated Subscriber last edited by

        You will also find that you fail some accessibility standards (WCAG) if your heading structure tags are out of sequence. As GPainter pointed out, you really want to avoid styling your heading structure tags explicitly in your CSS if you want to be able to to style them differently in different usage scenarios.

        Of course, for your pre-headings, you can just omit the structure tag entirely. You don't need all your important keywords to be contained in structure tags.

        You'll want, ideally, just one H1 tag on the page and your most important keyword (or semantically related keywords) in that tag. If you can organize the structure of your page with lower-level heading tags after that, great. It does help accessibility too, just note that you shouldn't break the hierarchy by going out of sequence. But it's not a necessity to have multiple levels of heading tags after the h1.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • samsha
          samsha last edited by

          Hello there,

          Thee way i recommend doing is the next one.

          H1 (one per page)
          H2 (Name of the section, for example How to improve SEO)
          H3 (Linkbuilding . it connects to the H2 of "how to improve SEO")
          H3 (Blog post. it connects to the H2 too)
          H3(Guest posting)

          and so on... Never never use more than an H1 on the same page and don't overused H2 as well.

          I hope it's clear, let me know if i can help youy with something else.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • GPainter
            GPainter @si.analytics last edited by

            Hey there, The best way (and the way I look at it) is like a book. The title of your page is the title, then from there you have chapters (H1) then perhaps sub-chapters (h2) and so forth. Each is relevant in how it breaks down but also wouldn't work the other way around so much.

            Some developers are a tad lazy and they will code the size of an h tag so when creating the page instead of actually coding it to match a design they may well use the h tags to help as it 'looks' right but then you may be internally screaming at the way it works over the look. Welcome to SEO where you may be stuck between design and development!

            H1 is 'meant to be more powerful and shouldn't be overused on a page as per the chapter guide I said use it sparingly but with more things SEO there is no golden rule and it's all little tweaks. Overall I wouldn't say its 'bad' just not 'optimized'.

            Hope that helps or at least gives you something to think about.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • joshibhargav_20

              Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?

              We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_20
              0
            • El-Bracko

              Will using a reverse proxy give me the benefits of the main sites domain authority?

              If I am running example.com and have a blog on exampleblog.com Will moving the blog to example.com/blog and using a reverse proxy give the blog the same domain authority as example.com Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | El-Bracko
              0
            • Daaveey

              Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?

              Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey
              0
            • TheaterMania

              Is tabbed content bad for SEO?

              I work for a Theater show listings and ticketing website. In our show listings pages (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/this-is-our-youth_302998/) we split our content into separate tabs (overview, pricing and show dates, cast, and video). Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by separating the content? Are we better served with keeping it all in a single page? Thanks so much!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania
              0
            • monali123

              How to detect a bad link and remove ?

              As per google penguin, all the low quality back links are going to affect the website SERPS hugely. So, we need to find all the bad back links and then remove them one by one. What I would like to know is, what tool do you use to find all the bad back links ? And how do we know which is a bad back link or bad website, where our link should not be there ? Then what service what do you suggest for back links removal. I contacted LinkDelete.com and they quoted me 97$ for a month to remove all links in less than 3 weeks. 
              Let me know, what you suggest.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monali123
              0
            • masterfish

              Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?

              I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish
              1
            • bronxpad

              Domain expiration and seo

              My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad
              0
            • scanlin

              Does capitalization matter for SEO?

              Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin
              1

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.