Hiding h1 tags in Magento
-
Hi Moz Community,
I know that hiding h1 tags isn't a good practice for SEO and google, but we have banners that look much nicer than the stock text Magento uses for its titles.
The banners have the same text and the h1 is in the source code, just not visible on front end. The option Magento gives is "hide title on the page." So I'm not sure if this is actually the bad way to hide it or if it's fine for search engines.
Thanks,
-Reed -
My view is a little bit different, but to be 100% I would have to look at the site. If the application / module is using style="display:none" to hide the tag, I would not use it. The reason being is that multiple h1 tags on a page dilute or in some peoples opinion cancel out other h1 tags. There are valid reasons to hide h1 tags, like when you are doing fade ins or have a slider with it in there. So I am of the opinion that even if it is hidden Google will pick up on it. So you do run the chance of being caught for keyword stuff or it could cancel out your h1 tag that is displaying. (As far as I know there is no clear 100% information on how Google handles multiple h1 tags. I have heard all sorts of things including it registers the first one seen in code, it registers the last one seen in code, it combines the weight given to all of the h1 tags, and even that they don't matter it is text size above the fold that matters)
If it were me this is what I would do. I would remove the text from the banners and use the built in functionality for the text. Depending on the location of them on the page really depends on how I would tag them, they could be h2, h3, span, ect. But I would opt for on page visible text over using a graphic with text. I realize that you do not like the style that it uses, but it is just a style that can usually be mimic'd with a style sheet. The reason I usually opt not to use text on banners is twofold. It cannot be translated and it cannot be searched.
-
Hi Jeff,
Exactly what I was looking for. I don't think we'd need to change the way titles are displayed, just wanted to be sure it wouldn't count it as duplicate or see it as a keyword hiding technique.
Thanks for your help
-
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for your response, really helpful.
Cheers.
-
Reed - You should be fine to use the "hide" function in Magento to not have the duplicate
tags show up on the site. If you want to jump into the code a bit more, you can likely change the way that the titles are displayed, but this might be a deeper dive into the design layer of Magento.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
-
h1 tags are useful, but are not needed by Google, as they will crawl the page to see the content. However if you have h2 h3 etc tags, but don't have an h1 then crawls will not read any tag at all, as they must be present, completed and sequential.
Hope that helps
Bruce
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
-
NoIndex tag, canonical tag or automatically generated H1's for automatically generated enquiry pages?
What would be better for automatically generated accommodation enquiry pages for a travel company? NoIndex tag, canonical tag, automatically generated H1's or another solution? This is the homepage: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/ You would enquire from a page like this: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation/sunshine-coast/twin-waters/the-sebel-twin-waters This is the enquiry form: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation-enquiry.php?name=The+Sebel+Twin+Waters®ion_name=Sunshine+Coast
Technical SEO | | Kim_Lazaro0 -
Can I set a canonical tag to an anchor link?
I have a client who is moving to a one page website design. So, content from the inner pages is being condensed in to sections on the 'home' page. There will be a navigation that anchor links to each relevant section. I am wondering if I should leave the old pages and use rel=canonical to point them to their relevant sections on the new 'home' page rather than 301 them. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
Hreflang tag implentation
Hi, We've had hreflang tags implemented on our site for a few weeks now, and while we are seeing some improvements for the regional subfolders I wanted to double check I had the tags implemented correctly (a couple of examples are below). However while the regional subfolder sites are now ranking instead of the US site for some keywords, some key search terms are still returning the US site. Could this be due to incorrect implementation for that specific page? Due to complications with using Magento we're implementing the tags in the site maps. Also magento appears to be inserting a rel canonical tag automatically for each page and self referencing e.g. On www.example.com/uk/security-cameras (one of the pages we're having issues with) the canonical tag is http://www.example.com/uk/security-cameras" />. Is this an issue? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. <url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits</loc>
Technical SEO | | ahyde
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits/1080p</loc>
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>0 -
Canoical tags how do i use them
Hi i have this coming up on the report for my url www.in2town.co.uk but i am not sure how to use the canonical tag. I am using joomla and would be grateful if anyone could please give me advice on how to use this. Canonical URL Tag Usage Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>0</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd> <dd>many thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
</dd> </dl>0 -
Hiding Duplicate Content using Javascript
We have e-commerce site selling books. Besides basic information on books, we have content for “About the book” , “Editorial Reviews”, “About the author” etc. But the content in all these section are duplicate and are available on all sites selling similar books. Our question is: 1.Should we worry about the content being duplicate?2.If yes, then will it by a good idea to hide this duplicate content using javascript or iframe?
Technical SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Duplicate title tag error
Hi all, I am new to SEO, and we have just launched a new version of our site (kept the domain name the same though). I keep getting errors for duplicate title tags - e.g. www.sandafayre.com/default.aspx and www.sandafayre.com/Default.aspx, www.sandafayre.com/StampAuctions.aspx and www.sandafayre.com/stampauctions.aspx (plus loads others :o). The only difference each time seems to be the capitalisation of the first character - but I though URLs were not case sensitive? I've been advised to add the rel canonical tag to one of the pages, but the problem is I really only have 1 version of each page! Can anybody help please? Many thanks in advance! Nikki
Technical SEO | | Stampy780 -
Worpress Tags Duplicate Content
I just fixed a tags duplicate content issue. I have noindexed the tags. Was wondering if anyone has ever fixed this issue and how long did it take you to recover from it? Just kind of want to know for a piece of mind.
Technical SEO | | deaddogdesign0 -
H1 problem on my site not sure how to solve it
Hi i have just done an on grade report for my site www.in2town.co.uk and i found that i had a number of h1 which was not doing my seo any good. I have sorted most of the h1 problems out but the report is still showing i have two h1 but i cannot find them, i have found one which i have done which is a short description of the site under the main banner page but i cannot find the second h1 can anyone please let me know if their is a simple way of finding the other h1 so i can deal with it many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860