topic Re: H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO? in Content Strategy & SEO

H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO?

MiaPV — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 21:24:10 GMT

I've got a really weird issue I discovered because I am trying to install the code to use Site Search 360 on our site. That was no problem and the search works but wasn't pulling in our blog titles for some reason, just the root folder?

SS360 says it automatically defaults to the h1 if you don't customize. Their tool allows you to test different things, so I was like, what the heck, I'll try h2...and what do you know? It pulls in the title (and unfortunately some other text, but at least the title is right).

Now, I still am having issues with getting it to work properly even with the h2 being called out in the code. But I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with this? Why are our blog titles being seen as h2 vs. h1?

And when I fix this, I would assume it would give our SEO quite a boost, but I wanted to ask to make sure so we don't run into issues in the future.

Thanks in advance!

Re: H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO?

MatthewShepherd — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 15:43:46 GMT

Hi @MiaPV

Looking at your blog source code your h1 shows as

<div class="span12 widget-span widget-type-raw_jinja " style="visibility: hidden;" data-widget-type="raw_jinja" data-x="0" data-w="12">
<h1>Paws & Play with Doctor J.</h1></div>

but this h1 is hidden using CSS.

and your blog title is wrapped in a h2

<h2>
<a href="https://www.preventivevet.com/pawsandplay/dog-training-the-right-and-wrong-way-to-reward-and-punish" id="hubspot-name" class="link hubspot-editable" data-hubspot-form-id="name" data-hubspot-name="Blog Title"><span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text">Dog Training - The Right and Wrong Way to Reward and Punish</span></a>
</h2>

It looks like you need to edit your blog listing template. This article will help you find your blog template: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/cos-blog/how-can-i-edit-my-blog-template (you want to edit your post template.)

Hopefully, from there you can find the relevant modules at the top of the template so you can remove the blog name from the H1 and change the H2 to contain the blog title. It should look something like this:

If you need further assistance feel free to send along a screenshot of your template and the code within those modules at the top of the template and I'll take a look.

Re: H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO?

MiaPV — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 16:14:36 GMT

Thanks Matthew! Yeah I was able to find that I just thought it was so weird, like why would anyone set things up this way?!!

My main concern, is that I want to make sure it won't screw anything up on the SEO side when I make this change. I mean, if anything, I would assume it should give our SEO a boost since h1 tags are so important, but from what I can tell, all HubSpot blog titles default to h2...so I guess I'm just wondering why they would do that since it doesn't seem like a best practice.

Re: H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO?

MatthewShepherd — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 10:23:42 GMT

Hi @MiaPV

Yes, I'd recommend using your H1 for your blog title on your blog post pages. It would certainly be better SEO to have a unique keyword-focused title for each of your blog posts in your H1. So something like this:

<h1>{{ content.name }}</h1>

I see the VAST theme does this by default and yes that doesn't make sense to me. There are lots of other blog templates in the marketplace which use H1 for the blog post title.

Re: H1 showing up as H2 on backend?? And when I fix this, will it help or potentially hurt our SEO?

MiaPV — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 14:28:34 GMT

Cool, thanks for the help Matthew!