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.
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
-
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25
and
tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great.
Chris.K
-
I agree with Federico, the styling should be fixed through CSS and probably before you start doing any other work. Making these changes really shouldn't take that long.
Since the site owner is wanting SEO done for his site, he/she would probably listen to your advice on getting the site cleaned up as soon as possible. Just state the issue and let them know that this problem is potentially costing them money.
-
Chris, I have a normal practice not to start with off-page optimization when on-page is not really fixed and this is because if the on-page is not fixed you cannot taste the real power of links...
This is common that the header tags are set with CSS as many websites do this from time to time...i think what you should do is to communicate the issue with the client and tell them how important it is to fix this problem as soon as possible.
-
Hi Chris,
It's been proven that the main issue with h1 and h2 tags is that people uses them everywhere within the design, while there's a reason for the 1, 2, 3, etc. h2 is used to denote your primary heading, h3 to denote your h2, and so on.
You could change the other h1, h2 (that are less important) and use h3 and h4 accordingly by styling the h3 and h4 in the CSS.
The only bad thing to do there would be to hide (display:none) any of the headings.
Hope that helps!
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 -
Should I use an acronym in my URL?
I know that Google understands various acronyms. Example: If I search for CRM System, it knows i'm searching for a customer relationship management system. However, will it recognize less known acronyms? I have a page geared specifically for SAP data archiving for human capital management systems. For those in the industry, they simply call it HCM. Here is how I view my options: Option #1: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/human-capital-management Option #2: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/hcm Option #3: www.mywebsite.com/sap-data-archiving/hcm-human-capital-management With option #3, i'm capturing the acronym AND the full phrase. This doesn't make my URL overly long either. Of course, in my content i'll reference both. What does everyone else think about the URL? -Alex
On-Page Optimization | | MeasureEverything0 -
SEO can id and class be used in H1?
Can ID and class be used in my H1 tag. I realize best case would be to change it, but it's going to require a change order from the ecommerce company to fix their sloppy code. Will this hurt seo? Example:
On-Page Optimization | | K-WINTER0 -
Colons in title tag?
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem0 -
Using H3-4 tags in the footer or sidebars: good or not?
Howdy SEOmoz fans! Is it considered a good / bad / neutral practice to include H tags in the footer, as a mean to group a few links? Take http://www.seomoz.org/ for instance: - Voted Best SEO Tool 2010! = H2
On-Page Optimization | | AxialDev
- Looking for SEO consulting? = H3
- Product and Tools = H3 Company = H3 etc. I often see the same principle applied to sidebars. I feel like because they don't contribute to the actual content structure and because they are repeated from page to page, we should avoid them, but I have nothing to back my intuition. [+] Perhaps they are helpful for usability (screen readers) and thin added value (i.e. category names that carry more weight than if they weren't headers). What do you think? Thanks for your time.1 -
SEO for luxury brands!?
Hi all, It is widely known fact that you will be a bit in trouble if you will need to do SEO for luxury brand that is not willing to sacrifice design, layout etc. for SEO purposes. So basically - there is no content to optimize and there is almost no keywords to rank! 😉 Just wondering - how would be the best to approach such kind of terrible situation? Regards, Jungle
On-Page Optimization | | Jungles0 -
Do you think using accordion text can hurt SEO?
I have a lot of text for my home page. My plan is to a J Query Plugin for accordion text. Does anyone think that this can hurt SEO efforts?
On-Page Optimization | | DTOSI1 -
German SEO
Just a quickie, Does anybody know of any strong German SEO agencies? Many Thanks Sean
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0
