H1 tags and CSS effect ranking?

Or is it just the recent google issues that everyone's talking about?

[nzap]

We have had solid ranking on about 4 keywords for several years.

About 3 weeks ago, I updated my html and removed all the extra <FONT COLOR> <FONT SIZE> <FONT FACE> tags by implementing basic CSS using <H1>, <H2>, <H3> tags.

This removed about 5K of space on my index page and the site looked much cleaner and neater overall.

But this weekend, 2 of 4 of our main keywords disappeared altogether -- and 1 of them dropped from #3 to #9. Only 1 main keyword stayed in place.

I'm wondering if this is because of the CSS changes I made or if it is the recent Google issues that everyone has been talking about with dropped pages, etc.

I am a beginner at CSS and not sure if I even implemented it correctly as far as the engines are concerned -- although the page looked fine as far as web design.

I simply assigned H1 to one font size and color, H2 to another, and H3 to another, in no particular order. Should the H1 and H2, etc. be assigned to a particular font size?

Is google really "broken" and they are trying to fix things? Are these issues unrelated this time around?

[jakegotmail]

thats odd...might be a mere coincidence with all the google flux's lately...or perhaps they thought you were trying to "game" them with your on page rehaul...so you were penalized.

[jbinbpt]

nzap,
That is a complicated question with no easy answer. Just moving tags to css should not of effected much.

Did you try and validate both your html and CSS?

What is showing as the cache date? Prior to changes?

It sounds that you did not use <H> tags in your html prior to these changes. If so that is a big change, but you should recover from it. <H> tags should be used in order of importance.
<H1> is really important. Use it for your title stuff. <H2> is still important. Use as a sub-heading <h3> is less important. Use it for bullet points and so on.

If you do not have you keywords in <h1> or <h2>, you might want to rework the code.

[nzap]

That's possible.

What I was wondering is if perhaps I did something wrong, since I'm not as experienced with CSS or if it change the density of the keywords on the page, since I removed so much extra html.

Perhaps the html was adding balance to my keywords? Or does google strictly look at text content?

Well, for now, I've reverted back to an older index page of mine, to see if it comes back up, until I can figure it out.

It's too bad though, the page actually looked a lot better with the CSS tags in place of html, but we certainly don't want to lose half of our google traffic because of some minor html changes.

[g1smd]

Every site that I have CSS'd has gone UP in rankings. I make the page from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, forms, and images. Those are the basic building blocks of a page.

Validate the HTML at [validator.w3.org...] - it is wise to check for errors.

[CainIV]

If you added keywords to H1, 2 and 3 tags on each page this is certainly no so minor. Alot of emphasis is placed on these headers, so it would make sense that changes would affect rank. Many times it is only temporary.

When you make these kinds of changes, try to first make a backup of the older page. As well, you need alot more than one week to see how things will settle with new changes.

If the cache date is before the changes, then you know the changes you did to headers has nothing to do with your ranking movements.

[nzap]

Jbinbpt,

The cache date is June 20th. As far as I know my rankings were in place on the 23rd (Friday) when I last checked - sometime over the weekend or either today (the 26th), things changed.

What do you mean by validating my html or CSS? How do I do that

[nzap]

Oh, ok, the cache date ... I made the changes about 3 weeks ago, the cache date is June 20th, so the changes were done before the cache date - does that mean it has nothing to do with the changes I made? but is something else?

Thanks for the help!

[jbinbpt]

CSS Valdiator [jigsaw.w3.org...]
HTML Valdiator [validator.w3.org...]

Insert your url's into both to see how good the code is.

If the cache date is prior to the changes, it might indicate that the changes had nothing to do with the drop, BUT cache dates are slow to update.

[statchecker]

My site also has had the same thing. However, I havent made any significant changes to it in months.

We went from top listings for some very competitive keywords all over the place to oblivion this morning. My site uses SSI, I have just a few adsense ads on about 10% of the site pages. The whole site is about 1000 pages of original content. I'm at a complete loss. I think I'll give up and start over.

My site uses CSS, but its been that way for over a year.

[angiolo]

You can have a look at this discussion:

[webmasterworld.com...]

To summarize:
-------------------------

Just check the following factors on the website
1. Use of Javascript Links
2. Loads of use of images and less text
3. The inner pages should be accessible from the homepage
4. The content should be natural on the pages
5. Have you changed the page naming or extensions?

The flow of the text only view of the document is also important. If your previous design had links at the top and main content below this and your new design hs the links further down (or vice versa) then this may affect your ranking.

Look at an old page and the new page equivalent in a Lynx type browser and compare the two.

Also have you checked that you are dropped from the two main datasets that are currently in circulation?
--------------------

I confirm that the flow of the text only view of the document is also important!

[nzap]

Hi, what did you mean by the 2 data centers?
Is there a place where I can check google results from various data centers?

[g1smd]

Yes. [webmasterworld.com...]

[nzap]

Ok, so that is great info to have: the data centers.

Now I see that my listings that have disappeared here are still active in other datacenters.

What does that tell us? Is there a way to check to see which data center I am in myself? And in which order they get updated?

I'm hoping that the one I'm in has just not been fully updated yet? Or what if it's the other way around and mine has and the other data centers in which I'm currently listed will disappear soon?

Anyone know how we can tell?

[SpanishWeb]

All things effect ranking, H1 and CSS included.

[trinorthlighting]

I just recently made my site w3c compliant. I made changes just as you did. The ranking dropped for a few days then came back to a higher position.

[bedlam]

All things effect ranking, H1 and CSS included.

Great. In other useful news, nothing can be made out of nothing, and everything is what it is and not another thing.

To the OP, if you

simply assigned H1 to one font size and color, H2 to another, and H3 to another, in no particular order

and if it's true that

Alot of emphasis is placed on these headers

then you have to consider that you may have done something such as assigning the most weight (in terms of headings) to relatively unimportant content! Presumably this would be 'bad' for your rankings.

For example, if you marked something up this way:

<h1>I am the least important content on the page</h1>
<h6>I am the most important content on the page</h6>

then the markup will be conveying a message exactly opposite to what you intend. If Google then trusts you to some degree and assigns some greater amount of weight to what's in the h1 than in the h6, you can guess at the effect...

-b

[Whitey]

CSS Valdiator [jigsaw.w3.org...]
HTML Valdiator [validator.w3.org...]

Thanks everyone - this a very useful thread.

Needless to say we have discovered some poorly implimented CSS code. We are not sure of the legacy of this code [ ie was it 3rd party or written by our developers - something we are currently clarifying ]

How important is this to fix? It is not our only method of navigation as we use a sitemap as well.

Our issue is one of cost and priority since a full CSS implimentation of our site was scheduled to come in behind improved results [ which haven't yet occurred ]?

[jbinbpt]

You should try and clear up as many as possible. It's not an involved process. I have found that the errors are compounded, clearing up one, cleans up 5 or so. Keep working at them. Code problems can lead to incomplete indexing.

You should also run the pages through a spider simulator to see how the search engines see the pages. WebmasterWorld has a great one in their toolkit that is available to paid supporters. The tool kit is well worth the price on admission.

This one works well also [tools.summitmedia.co.uk...]

[trinorthlighting]

I agree, clean code makes for a good site and excellent surfing for your customers.

[Whitey]

Any ideas where one can get some good quality code rather than make up our own?

Hopefully it'll be better than the first lot - but i guess we should have validated it!

[trinorthlighting]

Whitey,

Just validate what you currently have. If there are errors fix them. Are you using a shopping cart? What is the site?