noindex pages without h1 tag

[Tonearm]

Is it OK from an SEO perspective to omit the h1 tag from pages that are noindex'ed? I know the h1 tag is semantically important but it doesn't fit into the layout on the pages I've noindex'ed.

It doesn't matter if the noindex'ed pages themselves don't have the potential to rank well, but could the lack of h1 tag on those pages affect the ranking of other pages which are not noindex'ed and do include an h1?

[lucy24]

but it doesn't fit into the layout

I wish you would swing by again and explain what you mean by this. When someone says "layout" you usually think presentation, but h1 is a purely semantic concept. It could be anything from
{font-size: 1000%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; color: red;}
to
{font-size: inherit; display: run-in;}
depending on what the page warrants.

Now if all those other pages have two or more equally important headings, that's a semantics issue.


Do as I say, not as I do. I treat each directory as a unit, meaning that at least 90% of pages start with h2, and a good many with h3. But g### will fragment-link at least down to h3, so those lower-status headers aren't wholly invisible.

[Tonearm]

Thanks lucy24. It's just that I don't want those pages to have a heading at all.

Can anyone weigh in on the SEO implications of this?

[Rasputin]

The absence of H1 in itself is not a problem IMO - many category pages and home pages do not have an H1, on lots of sites (including my own main site which has not suffered as a result)
The presence of a material % of pages that are 'noindex' can perhaps be a problem though, in certain circumstances and if this represents a significant % of the sites pages and the pages are of low quality.

[lucy24]

I don't want those pages to have a heading at all.

You mean literally? No heading of any kind? Or just no h1?

I'm having a hard time picturing a page with no headings. What's the content? I have to assume it's something that's not suited for entry pages, or you wouldn't even be thinking of the no-index route.

[Tonearm]

The presence of a material % of pages that are 'noindex' can perhaps be a problem though, in certain circumstances and if this represents a significant % of the sites pages and the pages are of low quality.

Most of the pages I've noindex'ed are paginated pages after page 1. There are quite a few of them. Could that be hurting me?

You mean literally? No heading of any kind? Or just no h1?

No heading, it's just the way I want those pages to look. :)

[Rasputin]

From my own experiences with panda recovery I found that adding noindex to low quality pages or product pages had no effect on recovery, whereas removing the pages or rewriting them to improve their content did have a positive impact.

From which I concluded that the existence of a material number of low quality noindex pages can cause problems i.e. that google still take into account the quality of pages when assessing a site as a whole even when they have noindex.

Of course, I only have a few sites to compare and other people might have different experiences - I changed many things on these sites as well as removing the noindex pages so it is difficult to know which solved the problem.

If your pages are high quality but noindexed for a different reason then I don't think there will be a problem for the site as a whole.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I have category pages with no headings which serve up a different header image based on topic, the heading would be redundant and I noindex,follow my category pages so I suppose that's one example.

I also have had a long running site use H2 tags for the heading and not have a single H1 tag on the page, it ranked well anyway. I don't even remember why I switched to H2 tags but undoing it now would mean finding the handful of pages it would break first, there are a few H1 tags scattered in older posts, and it's just not worth the time and effort to fix, imo. Perhaps when it nags at me a little I'll bump it up my to-do list.

[jimbeetle]

If the page isn't in the index, what would it matter if it had an H1 or not?

[lucy24]

Funny you should say that. The immediately adjoining thread in List Unread currently ends with

Don't for one second believe that pages which aren't indexed can't affect your rankings. This was an eye opening exercise.

;)

a different header image based on topic, the heading would be redundant

You can put the image inside <h1> tags and then the alt will display with your header format if there's a problem. (The SEO sites may complain about this, but g### itself doesn't, so what do they know.)

This is also a pretty dramatic way of reminding you that you forgot to upload the image. Ahem.

[netmeg]

This is not something I pay much attention to and it doesn't seem to matter that much (except to make pageoneresults send me nastygrams if he happens by and notices it) Google doesn't really seem to care.

[Tonearm]

Don't for one second believe that pages which aren't indexed can't affect your rankings. This was an eye opening exercise.

Does anyone know which thread that comes from?

[lucy24]

Heh. I was waiting for the post author to drift by again and say "Hey, that was me!"

[webmasterworld.com...]

Read from the bottom up, because it started out as a "how to" question and got philosophical later on.

[seoskunk]

I don't think its that important. H1 is just usually a load of seo crap anyway. They should have done away with H tags in html5 as originally intended IMHO.

Go back to <B> was better semantically.

[lucy24]

?

<b> isn't semantic at all. It's purely presentational.

[seoskunk]

Ah come on now lucy....

Bold text is far more semantic and natural than xhtml H tags or should I say........


<h1>Lucy</h1>
Ah come on now
<h2>Bold</h2>
Bold text is far more semantic and natural than xhtml

You decide.......

[lucy24]

Possibly we are working from different lexicons.

"semantic markup" = what it means, what its function is
"presentational markup" = what it looks like

<em> = emphatic. Currently rendered by all browsers as <i>, at least in English.

But the concept of "emphasis" can also be expressed as:
-- plain text when body text is italic: popular a few centuries ago
-- small caps: ditto
-- katakana instead of hiragana if text is Japanese
-- spaced-apart letters when text is in fraktur or greek
-- boldface when text is greek; also in any script that doesn't use italics
-- bold italics when text is italic representing a short quotation
... et cetera. I'm restricting myself here to examples I've personally seen and in most cases used.

[jimbeetle]

Don't for one second believe that pages which aren't indexed can't affect your rankings. This was an eye opening exercise.

As far as I can follow that thread (and I'm not sure if I really did), I see a very mixed up server serving up some very mixed up "pages". Interesting -- and seems quite likely that it might affect how an SE sees a site -- but not quite exactly what we're talking about here.