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Proper usage of h1 tag

by Insignia
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

In the case of one our clients' home page, www.martaskitchen.com, the h1 tag in the page source can be seen as below:

<h1 class="header-title">Dubai's preferred boutique catering</h1>.

Do you think that it has any SEO Value to it? That is if class = "header-title" is present in the h1 tag?
#proper #tag #usage
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The class is fine, it's just CSS styling.

    Code:
    .header-title{ color:#fff; font-size:50px; line-height:56px; text-transform:uppercase;margin:10px 0; padding:0;/*-webkit-animation: tracking-in-contract-bck 1s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.610, 0.355, 1.000) both;
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Yeah, the class just tells search engines to see what size/font/color etc. the header should be. Keep in mind that having keywords in your header is not going to make an earth shattering improvement on page rankings.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by dave_hermansen View Post

      Keep in mind that having keywords in your header is not going to make an earth shattering improvement on page rankings.


      Actually it can help depending on the SERP competition.

      Google can/does use heading tag/text as a SERP title... and SERP title text obviously helps rank pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by dave_hermansen View Post

      Yeah, the class just tells search engines to see what size/font/color etc. the header should be. Keep in mind that having keywords in your header is not going to make an earth shattering improvement on page rankings.
      First of all, it's heading, not header. Of course you want your keywords in a strategic place like the header of a website. Not in the footer. But h1, h2,...is heading size.

      Second, it does not tell search engines that. It tells your browser what to display.

      Sure, if you make it white on a white background, and google detects that, they despise hidden words. Otherwise they could care less if it's red, green, purple, or whatever. They could give a rip about css, except if it's bloated and off-page, it can slow your site down.

      css does not make designing websites any easier.

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        First of all, it's heading, not header. Of course you want your keywords in a strategic place like the header of a website. Not in the footer. But h1, h2,...is heading size.

        Second, it does not tell search engines that. It tells your browser what to display.

        Sure, if you make it white on a white background, and google detects that, they despise hidden words. Otherwise they could care less if it's red, green, purple, or whatever. They could give a rip about css, except if it's bloated and off-page, it can slow your site down.

        css does not make designing websites any easier.

        Paul
        My bad. Thanks for pointing out my typos. I'm often doing three things at once and did mean to put "heading" instead of "header" and "browser" instead of "search engine". That's what happens when you are answering phone calls while in the middle of typing something, I guess.

        And, I agree that search engines couldn't care less what color, style, etc. your words are on a page.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        css does not make designing websites any easier.
        Sure it does.

        It's less code to use a CSS file and call it a dozen times from the HTML file with a class (example) than to use a dozen instances of inline styles on the HTML file to do the same job.
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi Insignia,

    When the H1 tag is used in the semantically correct fashion it is generally used as a headline for your page, provided the CSS is coded as such.

    A proper headline, regardless of whether it is in an H1, DIV, P, or any other HTML tag, is extremely helpful for users, as well as SEO. The headline, when optimized for for relevance, tells users, as well as search engines, what your page is about. While it is just one of many factors, it tends to be one of the more important page elements for telling search engines (and users) what your web page is all about.

    As I mentioned above, the tag you choose to place you page Headline in isn't all that important, but how you choose to style that element is very important because it gives relative weight to the terms contained within the page headline by its' location, size, and font weight. The more prominent the headline the more influence it has on page relevancy.

    Font size, color, position, and other styling attributes are all part of Google's core ranking algorithm and has been since the earliest version (backrub) of the search engine.

    Before Google replaced their Keyword Research Tool with the current Keyword Planner Tool you could use that old keyword tool to test page headlines and instantly verify the effect your changes were having on page relevancy.

    The key concept to bare in mind is that the more prominent a page element is the more weight it carries in influencing your pages relevancy score. However, keep in mind that relevancy isn't the only factor, but it is an essential factor in which keywords your page will potentially rank.

    HTH,

    Don Burk

    p.s. In your particular case, the page headline "DUBAI'S PREFERRED BOUTIQUE CATERING" is highly effective for getting that particular page to rank for that specific search term. If that was the primary keyword you wanted to rank the page for then I'd say it was a success. If you are hoping to rank for a different term you may need to change the headline, or at least include the keyword in a page sub-headline, heading, or bolded text near the top of the page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Endrue11
    H1 tag is always important and here class is a just define heading text style. It's not extra value of SEO.
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    • Profile picture of the author Insignia
      Thanks @Endrue11, But as Yukon mentioned, the presence of class in the h1 tag will not hurt seo - no?
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  • Profile picture of the author Dr Bison
    I ran some tests for CEO company few years ago on this subject, and we didn't see any improvement in rankings by using any of header tags (i.e. <h1>-<h6>),
    but, when we put the title, which was completely misleading in regard to text bellow, inside <h1> and <h2> tags, rankings dropped.

    Drop in rankings didn't happened if we removed header tags,
    or used tags <h3> to <h6>.
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