My answer has always been then same on this issue but it seems a lot of confusion was stirred online in the SEO community when a recent Google Hangout for Google News publishers brought up that you should have consistent h1 tags and title tags.
Consistency is key. One thing we always try to get right is extracting your headline. And if there are different places on the page that point to different headlines, that’s very confusing for the bot.
– Stacy Chan, Google
So this quote above, is specifically for Google News, not regular search and not Local SEO. In fact, this isn’t even a ranking issue among Google News publishers, it is a display issue when Google sometimes mistakenly grabs the wrong title to display in the SERPs.
Since SEroundtable did a write up on whether they should be identical or consistent, I figured I should touch on this issue when it comes to Local SEO.
H1 & Title Tags for Local SEO
When you’re doing Local SEO for clients, or for yourself there are a lot of myths out there you have to be careful about. Usually these myths were either true at one point, or crossed over from something entirely different and as time went on kept evolving into something else. So before the identical title and h1 tags crossover into the Local SEO world, I figure it’s time to hit that nail on the head before it happens!
How to structure your h1’s, h2’s, and page title tags isn’t exactly ground breaking. In fact, I’ve already blogged about more advanced on page optimization for local results.
Subscribe to this blog to get awesome content delivered to your inbox
Do you keep your title and h1’s identical?
The short answer is no, when it comes to local clients and even regular organic SEO.
When you have identical h1’s and title tags for local clients you run the risk of over-optimization. This is especially something you will want to be careful with if you’re using WordPress out of the box. Right now, on this very blog, my blog post title is automatically an h1 tag AND the page title tag. This is not intentional, but because I haven’t done any sort of optimization for my blog this is the default, which I wouldn’t recommend for your own sites.
Proper Structure and Wording of Titles and H1 Tags
Now that you know not to have identical h1’s and title tags for your site or client websites you may be wondering what are the best ways to structure, or word these tags?
Here are a few examples below that I would do. Let’s say the website is Bestroofer.com (just an example)
Title Tag: Roofing Contractor in Houston TX BBB A+ Rated
H1: Residential Roofing in the Houston TX Area
H2: Houston’s Best Roofing Company BBB A+ Rating for 20 years
Why would I do this?
Well the reason behind the title tag should be pretty obvious. I have roofing contractor in the title along with the location, Houston, TX. What you may be wondering though is why I would include BBB A+ Rated since that isn’t a keyword I would want to rank for. The reason for that is because I would want to increase the click-thru rate in the SERPs with organic searches. Seems more trustworthy.
Why the h1 tag? Residential is an adjective, it describes the type of roofing, but may also pick up additional relevance when someone types it in. I also put Houston TX in the h1 tag because local relevance is a big part of ranking in the pack when it comes to local SEO.
Why the H2? Location relevance + keyword relevance + trust = win. That’s why.
Structuring the title tags, h1’s, h2’s, etc. is really not very difficult. You have a core keyword, you need keyword relevance and location relevance. You want to have different supporting words without changing the overall topic.
In Conclusion
There are really only 2 big factors when it comes to Local SEO when you strip everything else away these are the two things that matter:
- Location relevance
- Keyword relevance
Identical is not good, but consistency certainly is the key. Consistency in the sense that you’re steady with the overall keyword topic and location.
If you would like to learn more about Local SEO, I do have a local seo webinar replay that breaks down pretty much everything you will need to know in order to perform Local SEO for clients, or for yourself.
Hey Nathan. I have that exact problem with wordpress. Is the only way to tackle this problem by manipulating the code in the child theme or is there a way to change that inside the user friendly CMS.
I realize you are more of a joomla guy.
Thanks boss.
Hey John,
Thanks for the comment and question. I just installed Yoast which is free for WordPress. It seems to be the best option available and allows you to customize your Browser Title Tag and depending on the theme you use, your post title will be your h1. That’s a much better option than deciding to not display the title at all.
Wow, just read your reply. Should I use your method instead. Why is it better not to show the title at all?
I mean, the title automatically shows up on the page as an H1. So id have to tell wordpress to not show the title at all on the page right?
figured it out for my specific theme. Just edited the style.css child theme folder
.page .header-post-title-container {
display: none;
}
You have no idea how much you’ve changed my attitude towards this business.
My own problem now are back pains from being at the computer to much. Write a post on some easy solution for upper back pain it will go viral
But you want both the browser title and H1, Yoast seems to be a much better solution or at least easier solution. Try it out!
As for the back pain… get a better chair. LOL.
The “display none” option is not a fix, but a mask at best. if you go in and look at the code the tag is still there and read by the bot, it simply is not displayed on the visual front end. IF this a concern, you would need to remove this from the specific Page Template to truly resolve the issue.
Thanks man, starbucks doesn’t have many options to choose from.
For whatever reason I don’t get notified by email when you reply to comment.
haha.. As for the notification, I don’t have that setup. I suppose I should look into that.
might cut back on some of your uh bounce rate there Mr. Bully!
Not sure what you’re talking about, I never mentioned the display:none tag in the CSS. Yoast doesn’t mask it at all, and I’m not sure what that has to do with bounce rate anyhow with the exception of search traffic.
John mentioned the us of the display none option in a comment above.
Yes, but how would that apply to me since I’m using Yoast and why would that have anything to do with bounce my rate?
that in particular has nothing to do with bounce rate. but setting up e-mail notification of new comments would stop those of us looking at comments from coming on when not needed to see if there is a comment.
Ahh, good point but I was also thinking, wouldn’t that actually increase bounce rate if someone was alerted to a new comment, came back to see what it was and left?
If you happen to have schema tags on your comments and I were to come here directly, leave a comment and then pull away… The big G would not consider that a bounce ( or so I have to the best of my ability determined ) You have to remember that USUALLY the e-mail that is sent has the new comment at the very least included. So if the comment is of no interest you would tend not to go to the page. The minimal study I have done with this indicates that you can drop your return visitor bounce with the e-mail setup
I’ve done that for a client before but it was a Drupal project. Problem is, Google Analytics still registers that as a bounce as long as they do not respond to the comment. Moz comments just send you the link, they don’t show the comment, I suppose they care more about returning traffic.
Yeah, if they do not respond that is a bounce.. kinda sucks. I try to look at it like this way. Bounce is a GA # does G look at all GA implimentors different than say non GA implimentors? A direct inbound that is a bounce is far different to me than someone that comes from G and bounces back. I pay far more attention to the later, than the former.
With WordPress this issue is even still a bit more complicated. The issue with Titles and H1’s is really only 2/3’sthe issue. With WordPress the URL as well is an exact match. I personally don’t mind the Title and the URL to match, it is the H1 that I would rather have an amount of control over. I personally as stated above remove that from within the template itself allowing me to insert my own manually with ever page.
Yeah but you can easily edit the URL to your liking. I’m liking Yoast so far on this blog even though I haven’t done much on page yet, but it gives you control over h1’s, titles, etc. The on page options with WordPress out of the box is another reason I don’t prefer it for client sites.