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Header and Subhead Tags

Header tags (for example, H1s, H2s, etc.) serve an important function for search engines and users alike. They outline the content on a page in an easy-to-read structure. 

Our SEO Office Hours notes below compile Google’s own advice, explanations, and SEO recommendations for dealing with header tags on your website. 

Learn more about SEO best practices for website content in Lumar’s Website Intelligence Academy.

Google Uses Semantic Markup to Understand Importance of Highlighted Text

Google can use semantic markup such as bold, italics and headings to understand that highlighted words are especially important.

27 Jul 2018

Meta Tags Can be Combined in One Tag

Meta tags can be combined rather than having to have each one on its own separate line e.g. content=notranslate nositelinkssearchbox.

10 Jul 2018

Google Sees No Difference Between HTTP Header and HTML Section

Google can process content in the HTTP header and the static HTMLsection at the same time so there’s no benefit from adding tags in one or the other. This has no effect on crawl budget, for example.

29 May 2018

Ensure Scripts in Head Don’t Close it Prematurely

John has seen instances of scripts inserting non-head elements into the head of a page, like iframes or divs, which could result in Googlebot missing hreflang links because it assumes the head has closed. This can be checked with Google’s Rich Results tool using ‘View Code’.

13 Apr 2018

Header Tags are Optional

Header tags make it easier to understand content and group sections for ranking, but aren’t important for Google and don’t need to be used in a uniform way. CSS styles can also be used to highlight important content.

14 Nov 2017

Use X-Frame Header to Stop Content Being Framed By Other Sites

X-Frame http header can be used to prevent browsers from allowing your content from being framed. Google also respects that and won’t index framed content.

22 Aug 2017

Add Tag in Header to Specify Don’t Want Content Embedded in iframe

You can add a tag to the header of your page which will let browsers know that you don’t want content to be embeddable as an iframe

30 Jun 2017

Links Within Primary Content Provide More Context but Less Weight than Sitewide Links

Googlebot differentiates between boilerplate content in headers, sidebars and footers for indexing. Links within the primary content provide more context than sitewide links, but sitewide links to pass more weight.

30 Jun 2017

Dynamic Mobile Pages Take Precedence over Responsive

If you have a vary header which returns a different page for a mobile user agent, Google will use that as the mobile page instead of the responsive page.

10 Mar 2017

Google Sometimes Makes Requsts with If-modified-since headers

Googlebot sometimes makes requests using an if-modificed-since request, in which case a 304 response is fine.

24 Feb 2017

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