Forum Moderators: open
I'm working within a CMS that is somewhat restrictive because of the way it publishes content
My question is this... What is the best/correct way to structure my paragraphs:
Example 1:
<h1>This is my main title of the page</h1>
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text</p>
<p>This is another para with with three or four
sentences of text</p>
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text</p>
<p>This is another para with with three or four
sentences of text</p>
Example 2:
<h1>This is my main title of the page</h1>
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text<br />
This is the next paragraph, with three or four sentences
in it<br />
<br />
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text<br />
This is the next paragraph, with three or four sentences
in it<br />
<br />
This is the next paragraph. Eventually I would close
the paragraph tag to show the end of the para section.<br /></p>
The latter example is how my CMS outputs. I don't like using a single paragraph tag with umpteen breaks but our SEO guy assures me that its not a problem with regards to page rank. Is this correct?
Using H's tags in the middle of a P's doesn't seem like good practice. My opinion is that each new header should be followed by a new paragraph.
So this leaves me confused as to the best way to structure my pages. As I am restricted to the confines of a rotten CMS I need to figure out the best way to do this. I am often required to write lots of content and each paragraph requires a subtitle. Can I use multiple h2 tags inside a single p tag? Am I better off simply ignoring the use of h2 tags and using strong instead?
You may have guessed by now that SEO isn't really my field so I would really appreciate any, and all, advice on offer.
Thanks so much.
However whether or not it has any impact on SEO I don't know. It shouldn't but I'd look at the Google cached versions of your pages to make sure they don't look weird - like content that ends before it should.
Let's say you want to validate to HTML 4.01 strict (probably the best choice currently for well-formed documents that are being served as text/html, which includes most documents that use an XHTML doctype incorrectly).
So this should validate to HTML 4.01 strict with one small change (bolded)
<h1>This is my main title of the page</h1>
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text<br />
This is the next paragraph, with three or four sentences
in it<br />
<br />
<h2>This is a sub-title</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para with with three or four
sentences of text<br />
This is the next paragraph, with three or four sentences
in it<br />
<br />
This is the next paragraph. Eventually I would close
the paragraph tag to show the end of the para section.<br /></p>
It still isn't good semantic markup, but it would validate, because your first P doesn't close, but the closure is implied and the parser would close it upon encountering the H2. The last one closes, but that's okay b/c it doesn't have an H2 in it.
BTW, there's no reason to have the closing slash on the BR if you're validating to HTML 4.01. And there's no reason to be using XHTML doctypes for a text document.
Anyway, whether or not a page is valid or not has, generally speaking, no effect on how search engines see your site. Since some huge percentage of sites do not validate (including, but the way, Google.com), it is not taken into account as a ranking factor.
There is one caveat to that - if your code is so far out of spec that the bots can't correctly parse your pages, then that might hurt you.
Unclosed P tags and lots of BR tags should have no effet on any of that stuff.
And in any case, aside from how it affects your rankings, it will definitely not affect your Page Rank, which is based on off-page factors and is different from your ranking in the search results.
Either remove the closing tags from all paragraphs, as suggested above; or get the CMS fixed to do the job correctly as per your first example.
I'd expect broken code from a CMS designed in the mid-1990s, but not in one in use almost a decade into the 21st century.
<rant>
WYSIWYG input and user-generated content in general make validation iffy with CMS, but you wouldn't expect such a catastrophe as m8fyu has.
You wouldn't expect it, but... the company my wife works at, which is pretty big ($2B in revenue/year) has a CMS that runs the sites for her whole division (many sites) and it generates utter garbage code with a mix of upper and lower case tags, problems with nesting and other issues. It doesn't come close to validating. It is also a $$$,$$$ figure "enterprise level" CMS.
The problem is that often the people who are in the loop on purchases for such things have no clue about SEO. They're the IT guys who implement the phone system and the payroll system and wouldn't know good HTML from bad.
</rant>
Sorry for the OT.
<h1>Heading for the main topic of the page</h1>
<p>This is a para about the main topic.</p>
<p>This is another para about the main topic. On some pages, the whole page might be about the main topic, and you'd have many paragraphs just about the main topic.</p>
<h2>Heading for a subtopic of the main topic</h2>
<p>This is a para about the subtopic</p>
<p>This is another para about the subtopic... etc...</p>
<h2>This another subtopic of the top heading</h2>
<p>This is an ordinary para about the second subhead</p>
etc...
OR...
Instead of the second <h2>, you could have an <h3>.
The <h1> is generally either the page title or a close variant of it.
The above doesn't exhaust the possible arrangements of <h2>s and <h3>s. It's meant to indicate how the headings relate to paragraph text at each heading level.
<h1> directly followed by <h2> doesn't make sense to me in this scheme.
I think it's quite common for a document to have a secondary title immediately after the main title. In a strictly hierarchically organized document, it doesn't really make sense to have an intervening paragraph between the h1 and the h2.
If I were to put my last book into HTML, the introduction would look like this
<h1>Introduction: textes et contextes</h1>
<h2>Contexte: Guerres et bruits de guerres</h2>
<p>En 1547 et 1548....</p>
There's nothing semantically incorrect about that and it's common enough in print publications (especially French and German scholarly publications), though less common on the web for a variety of reasons.
I could also imagine something like this for a scientific paper:
<h1>Suppression of Onc5 in drosophila melangaster</h1>
<h2>Abstract</h2>
<p>blah blah blah</p>
In a strictly hierarchically organized document, it doesn't really make sense to have an intervening paragraph between the h1 and the h2.
I think it does for SEO. From your headings, I can only guess what your book was about. You picked a tricky illustration, as "textes et contextes" might apply to any subject. If that's the case, then there's a certain context lacking. ;)
But, if the book is about the subject of texts and contexts in criticism, then I'd have a paragraph or two about that critical approach following the <h1> as you have it.
If it's really about, say, text and context in historical documents, then I'd add some more vocabulary... as in (partially anglicized)...
<h1>Introduction: texts and contexts in historical analysis</h1>
<p>An approach to analyzing historical text profits greatly if we also look at the context in which these texts are used....
<h2>Contexte: Guerres et bruits de guerres</h2>
<p>En 1547 et 1548....</p>
Otherwise, "Introduction: textes et contextes" or, for that matter, "Abstract", are describing the structural conventions of your documents rather than describing the subject matter of that page.
That's a valid taxonomy, I suppose... just as Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 might be valid as heading names... but they wouldn't be very helpful as headings for search... nor actually very descriptive for people, unless some other context were already known. I suppose you could even have the following as a structure that might make some logical sense, but is it useful?
(Forgive my French in advance).
<h1>Introduction: texts and contexts</h1>
<h2>Chapter One</h2>
<h3>Contexte: Guerres et bruits de guerres</h3>
<p>En 1547 et 1548....</p>
<h2>Chapter Two</h2>
<h3>Contexte: Rétablissement et la politique du rétablissement</h3>
<p>En 1549 ŕ 1568....</p>
Similarly, I wouldn't want to use "Home Page" as the <h1> heading and title of a home page, nor the conventional "Welcome". On a web page, I'd probably make "Welcome" a graphic that wouldn't be seen in search.
Another point about "Introduction"... it assumes an order of reading which works in a bound volume or in a paginated article on a site... and in that sense also resembles the function of "Home" more than it resembles subject matter on home.
I think it does for SEO.
Bingo! I was going to say that, but, uh, left it as an exercise for the reader.
HTML is structural markup, not semantic markup. The attempt to make it into the latter is an afterthought. So my only point was that there are many deployment scenarios and in many of them, it makes perfect sense to have titles follow one on the other.
To go back to my example from my Introduction (this concerns the structure of the Introduction, not the book), neither of your scenarios really fits. It's not criticism and it's not an "approach". The book is an edition of an old manuscript. The introduction sets the stage by discussing the historical context in which the manuscript was created and also by discussing the nature of the original physical manuscript. So the title could be
Introduction: historical context and state of the physical manuscript
That would be precise, but dry.
I don't know as "Introduction" as a concept (rather than a convention) presumes a bound volume. I take it as given that nobody starts with the introduction. It's the equivalent of an "About Us" page or possibly even a FAQ. I expect people to flip some pages, peruse the volume and then decide where the start (these are not novels). Anyway that's a side issue.
