8 replies to this topic

[Bootfit]

Hello all, first time post...

Does anyone know if it's detrimental to your sites seo if you constantly change the H1 tags on your homepage?

I have a site that has a rotating headline section that uses H2s but I'd like to have the latest headline to display as a H1 to give the latest story more prominence for the search engines. Would changing the H1 on a regular basis be detrimental to the site even if it's content is relevant to the rest of the site?

Cheers all

[chrishirst]

Change them, don't change them, it's not a big deal.

latest headline to display as a H1 to give the latest story more prominence for the search engines

What makes you think that having it as a level 1 heading does "give it more prominence"?

AND of course changing one element on one URL only affects that one URL NOT the whole site

[Bootfit]

What makes you think that having it as a level 1 heading does "give it more prominence"?

It was my understanding that H1 tags have more seo value than other H tags.

If this is not the case, could you explain my misconception?

[chrishirst]

They MIGHT have some "value" then again they might not. All "SEO by the numbers" gets you is a chance to see your URLs get dumped by various algorithm changes.

However they have a great deal of value for usability and accessibility and of course search engine really appreciate it when you pay FAR more attention to what real users want than what search engines want.

[Bootfit]

search engine really appreciate it when you pay FAR more attention to what real users want than what search engines want.

But by optomising for users surely by default you're optomising for the search engines...

[chrishirst]

But by optomising for users surely by default you're optomising for the search engines...

Correct but it doesn't work the other way around.

[Bootfit]

Correct but it doesn't work the other way around.

Yep I understand that, so back to my original question of using SEOed (aka User Optomised) copy in an H1 - and the penalties (if any) of the frequency of changing the H1 content; is there a penalty for frequently changing the H1 content on a daily or weekly basis?

[chrishirst]

Why would there be a "penalty" for changing your documents? Penalties are for blatantly trying to "fool" search engines with tricks (and "formula" SEO).

You are at liberty to change content whenever you wish and as often as you wish, but of course there is a drawback, if you change the words found at a document URL on a frequent basis, how are search engines going to determine what that URL should be weighted for?

The document URL you are changing will ALWAYS be getting "re-evaluated", so may never appear in the indexed results, or it may "bounce" in and out of the index, so provided you are not anally retentive about expecting to see your root url (AKA the "home" page) being shown to searchers for "your most important keywords", it simply isn't a problem.

Most people (including SEO "experts") create problems for themselves then call it a "penalty" rather than consider the probabilty that they "got it wrong".

[Michael Martinez]

How are the headlines being presented? You say you have "rotating headlines" but then you say you want to present the "latest headline" as an H1 (rather than an H2). These two statements don't make sense without some more context.

Are you adding new headlines to a pool of rotating headlines and dropping older headlines?

If that is the case then every time you add or delete content (regardless of whether it is emphasized in an Hx header) you change the composition of the page and THAT may impact its search visibility (and the amount of search referral traffic you get). This is perfectly normal behavior.