H1 & H2 tags

[theglowcompany]

Hi,

I'm keen to optimise my site for the search engines. I find alot of reference to H1 & H2 tags & when I run a validation on my home page it states that h1 & h2 are missing.

How do I access/change H1 & H2 and, in relation to SEO, how should this be approached?

Thanks

[harlequin]

hi there, the solution we have is to create 7 templates for each different type of actinic product/brochure templates and around the NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME we place heading 1 - 6 tags .. the seventh template has no heading tag as the engines dont like replicated heading tags.

Then for the first six products/brochure fragments on any page we use heading 1-6 templates and all the rest on the page use the one with no heading tag...

when you add the heading tags you will need to specify the font size as well because if you dont then all 6 tags will make the product name decreasingly smaller....

one other note is it is well worth learning how to make your new templates available in actinic without you having to browse for them...this is done by editing the .ini files and provided you back things up there is no reason not to edit the .ini files and make your life easier... (details in handbook and knowlege base)

i am assuming above that you can edit the actinic templates and have some knowledge of html..

oh yes..one other thing...if you can match the meta keywords and description to the first 6 products on that page then your meta tags will be in sync with your heading tags and the engines all love you helping them by telling them which parts of your page are the most important...

works for us....plus obviously we offer a paid for seo service and we usually do a lot more things beside using the heading tags..

Steve Quinn
Harlequin Domains
www.harlequindomains.com
steve@<NOSPAM>harlequindomains.com
0800 0832077

[theglowcompany]

thanks steve, I'm learning alot about seo from various forums - not that it greatly shows on my site at the moment - but we'll get there.

I understand all the basics but the H1 & H2 has been mentioned alot - no I cant do html without detailed instructions.

I think I understand what you are suggesting but it is a bit beyond me & my site is sort of finished.

Is there any way of adding h1 & h2 to say the brocure page & other pages - I envisage that it may not make good SEO sense to have the same throughout the site but possibly the catalog page could benefit

[harlequin]

hi, i have let my self in for it now havent i...

actually i am in the middle of producing an instruction set (and bunch of templates pre-done) for our clients who like to do things themselves, so i will post up here in a little while an exact howto...

Actually, seeing as i stumbled in on your post i will send them to you offline as soon as poss...

Steve

[theglowcompany]

You did a bit!

that would be great though- thanks

info@theglowcompany.co.uk

I will offer any feedback etc


How does it affect existing sites?

Also, briefly, what significance does h1 & h2 have in the SE's?

As I mentioned on anylising my site h1 & h2 arnt there - therefore if they are significant as I suspect this needs to be addressed - is this something Actinic should look at?

[harlequin]

in short they (and h3, h4, h5, and h6) are used to differentiate between headings in a document.

most people (myself included) are guilty of simply using <b> bold tags and increasing font sizes to make things stand out more.

the proper way to do things is to format your documents correctly and therefore give s.e.spiders, and users browsers the best code possible...

an excellent place for information regarding s.e.o techniques is www.webmasterworld.com and more specifically www.seochat.com but you will find out all about the significance of the various tags you can use at webmasterworld...its just been going a little longer than seochat...but then again, seochat runs the Google-Dance tool, and allows you to search all upcoming results on googles pre-internet servers...very cool indeed...

Steve

[harlequin]

we just noticed that one of our clients www.properrecords.com has gone to no1 in google for latest dance music http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=latest+dance+music
... but the link to the site is knackered...the product with corresponding reference and page name is still there onsite but the link google has isnt working, is this something someone can see easily...my engineers are moving into a new office today (hurrah) but for once they are not here to tell me.... today of all days google foils us (for a minute)

[theglowcompany]

Google is cream crackered at the moment - if you havnt followed it -tho suppose you have, its not the usual dance & is still shuffling the SERPS like mad - I've lost ££ because of it

-I've been a regular at seo chat for a while but will check out webmasterworld

Is there any way I can use h1 & h2 now that would not greatly affect the look of my site? ie hidden or do I need to hardcode text that will appear?

[harlequin]

in a product template, same for brochure fragment, where it says

<FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME</FONT>

or <FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURETITLE</FONT>

A heading tag around either becomes

<h1><FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME</FONT> </h1>

and

<h1><FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURETITLE</FONT> </h1>

the only issues are that a heading tag will increase the size of the text displayed, so you may need to play with the size="+1" bit to get it right (as this counteracts the heading tags wish to increase the physical size of text)...you are allowed negative values as well i.e. size="-1".....

ps, must admit i like to do this work in dreamweaver, it makes it easy to watch the html being created whilst you work and i can provide clearer instructions if you are using dreamweaver...

does that help anyone or am i rambling uselessly :D

[theglowcompany]

I follow the reasoning in the code - but how would h1 &2 apply to say my homepage - not a product. I think that it is the home page that I need to initially focus on.

Oh, also Alt tags are said to be important - how are these represented in Actinic.

I know what you mean about Dreamweaver - I cant use it but using Actinic does limit your progress with the true web builders

[harlequin]

on your homepage you might want to use a brochure fragment with a heading 1 tag around the brochuretitle where the brochre title is "Glow Sticks, Party Accessories, More Products.....Welcome to GlowSticks.com"

What you are trying to do is to put your keyphrases inside those tags and thats where you can get creative with your content...

You should use the heading tags inside and outside the catalog, although i agree your front page is probably the most important in the engines eyes..

Alt Tags are very important and another reason why i love actinic so much, as actinic unless it is broken will put an alt tag on virtually every image based on simple and correct criteria...

the alt tag for a product image is simply a similar to Alt=NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME so it just uses the product name...]

similarly with brochure fragments it uses the brocure fragment title to generate an alt tag for any image associated with that fragment...

It is a fairly simple step if you get into customvar's to say Alt="CUSTOMVAR:ALTTAG1" and then specify your own alt tags for each and every product, this is actually not bad advice as you can usually put quite a lot more info in there than a simple product name, the one thing to be careful of is to try not to simply repeat the product description because most engines ignore repeated text...be creative...

Steve

[harlequin]

i am thinking that by saying that you are saying you cannot use other webbuilding software and nothing could be further from the truth its just dreamweaver is my preferred method of design...for others its different.

the only one i would advise not to use is Microsoft Frontpage...it re-writes the code but then again so does dreamweaver sometimes although in dreamweaver its simple to switch off...with microsoft not so.....

anyway, i am accepting no liability here as you are not my customer, but, if you back up your site first +++ take a copy of your site1 folder (sorry actinic, snapshots still not reliable enough to trust completely yet) and try this.

in actinic goto Advanced>Template Manager and if you get a grey box with quite a lot of tabs then you are ok.

if you get the template editor which is more graphical, white background, then choose 'change view' to get the grey tabbed version.

when you have the grey tabbed version of template editor, on the right hand side you can click 'editor' and that will let you browse to any other webpage editing software you use.

when you have done that, you can work through the various templates as and when you need to edit a certain part of the catalog by simply clicking the appropriate button on the approprite tab.....this will open an Actinic template in your chosen editor...

as soon as you open any template you should save it straight away as Backup-Act_Primary.html etc and all should be fine and easy to repair if it all goes horribly wrong..(dont forget then that when you have worked on it, to save it as the original filename otherwise you will keep saving it as Backup-Act_whatever.html and Actinic isnt expecting to use that template it wants the one without backup in front of it...

there are many more articles in the forum and knowledge base about editing actual templates but i hope this clears up a misconception that you have to use dreamweaver....its yet another plus point in actinic's favour and one often overlooked...

Steve

[chrisbrown]

If you upgrade to Developer you can use Dreamwaever as well as a text editor.

By the way. I wouldn't stick all that <FONT> guff in the <H1>, etc tags. Browsers use larger font sizes for headings anyway (unless the user has deliberately overridden the settings) and the Actinic stylesheet automatically sets the font-family to whatever you have set in Design Setting | Site Defaults.

[harlequin]

does choosing your template editor not work in catalog and business, im sure it does....i didnt think you needed developer

quite a few of our clients are using d/weaver and other editors and they dont have developer...

although i dont mind selling copies of developer ;)

steve

[chrisbrown]

Sorry I was rather unclear. Developer gives you Dreamweaver integration extensions so that you can see the template XML tags.

[theglowcompany]

thanks for the replies.

Would it add any more prominence in the SE's to add h1 or h2 to my existing title or a fragment

[harlequin]

hi chris, i think that contrary to popular belief the dreamweaver plugin also works with catalog and business....although im not 100% im 99%

and it is freely available from the dreamweaver site so there is no issues about having to own developer...

or am i wrong...

steve

[harlequin]

hi again james, the answer is yes the search engines will respect the tag so use it...

as i said previously it is good to get your keyphrases, not repeated, into the title of a fragment...in products this happens by default really as its the product title..but in fragments you can be as i said a bit creative in order to get the keyphrases into your titles...

if you simply have two templates for brochure fragments with the heading tags around them then use them...

many people say many different things and i am always trying to be careful to not give bad advice but truth be told most of our clients are at the top of their industries in google, (sorry is there another search engine?) so i feel my advice is good...

where i was saying to specify the font size before is because using a heading tag without specifying the font size will produce 6, lessening in size titles....if you specify the font size then they should stay the same size and not look odd..

i know what chris is talking about that css overrides even your specified fonts and again its something to consider...you could write your own css heading tags to fully control the content if you wish...

personally i like to still use normal font formatting, not css simply because for someone who has bad sight for example will have their browser set to display text at a bigger size....but if you as a webmaster use css then this overrides their choices meaning they cannot increase the size of your text easily...

there is a further setting in most browsers that lets you ignore fonts AND css styles on a page but in our experience the vast majority of people (webusers) know that they can increase text size easily by going to view>text size> but they struggle to find or even know that if someone is using css (and why should they know anything about CSS) which bypasses their efforts to increase the text size that they can over-over-ride this in Tools>Internet Options>General>Accessibility>Ignore all fonts specified...

as I said, for this reason alone we like to use normal font tags and indeed for all actinic websites we usually change Actinic's normal <Font> tags on the templates for <CUSTOMVAR:FONT> which then lets us change the font at the change of a value.
Actinic still have a curious habit of using their own CUSTOMVAR:ACTCSSFONTFAMILY in Design>Options>Site Defaults>Properties which lets you specify the font throughout MOST of the site, however they still hardcode Arial font in the search pages and checkout...I dont know why....

as long as all the fonts sizes are relative to each other this should allow people with bad eyesight whose browers are set to display your text bigger to get onto your websites with the minumum of fuss and allowing them control over what they see...

just my tuppenth worth on css and traditional fonts...

James, use the heading tags, they cannot hurt and will likely do you some good..

Steve

[theglowcompany]

wow, thanks for the effort Steve, will send new keyboard!

OK, so just to clarify, I have my title - then I have the first fragment - you suggest if this is in h1 it will or could gain more prominence with the SE's?

And, using h2,h3 etc may also have this effect?

Just want to clarify that - dont want to upset the missus (google) she's moody enough at the mo!! :o)

Cheers

[harlequin]

hi james, after actually LOOKING at your existing fragments i would advise this....

Keep the order in which your content is in, that is fine...

For the search engines eyes though, your third fragment/ paragraph where you say..

Our glow in the dark products include Glowsticks, Mathmos, El Wire, Glow Party Supplies, Flashing Products, Lightsticks Glowsticks, Promotional Goods, & Clubwear and have many uses from Camping to Clubbing, Glow Party, Outdoor Entertaining & offer good Party Ideas

i would say thats your most consise, efficient paragraph on the page and actually because you have used a template like Description and Image No Title, i would actually say to put the heading 1 tag around NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURETEXT on that one and only fragment template...or preferably when you add the heading tag to that fragment, save it as Act_Whatever_You_Like.html and then on the fragment choose 'browse' for template and manually select the one you just created..

this is better because if you use the standard actinic template elsewhere you may not want a h1 tag around it..

the effect in the search engines eyes is that it will look at your page and automatically accept that the info in the h1 tag is the most important to you, therefore its what you would like to be found under..

pretty logical really, google and all the other engines are simply saying, look either I can try and work it out for myself, or you can give me some help here and tell me what your most important info is...

either way its just another part of their algorithms (rules) they use to differentiate who should be at the top..

again, in my honest opinion,they are looking at it like this, if you have bothered to work on the code/formatting of information of your site, the more likely the person who found a link to your site on their search engine will be impressed and keep using their search engine as THATS who the engines are there for, they are NOT there for you and me as webmasters.....

please call us tomorrow and i will alter your brochure fragments for free....i am not the best at explaining things and being able to touch type is sometimes a curse as its like having a mouth that runs away with itself....

:D

[harlequin]

if you are still up, and using a windows machine, i can connect up to your pc and SHOW you...obviously though you have to accept that we accept no liabilities but most of our customers can vouch for this method of support...it uses windows netmeeting or even if you are an msn member our hotmail address is harlequindomains@hotmail.com and you can bing bong me on there and invite me to share your desktop..

personally i prefer netmeeting direct ip to ip as its 128 bit secure and the primary method of communication for the us navy....not that i like them, but they are a paranoid bunch of people and THEY trust netmeeting to a point...

steve...

also, just look at this http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=search+engine+optimisation

the google search for search engine optimisation...

when you get there go to the first result, then in your browser go to View>Source and you will likely get a text pad come up with that pages code on it..

if you look down, about 1/3 down, you will find a h1 tag, around guess what, the phrase, search engine optimisation.....

proof enough ??

[theglowcompany]

Thanks alot Steve,

I'm at work unfortunately - but I take it that actually from within a fragment I could write:

<h1><FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">all my glow text here </FONT> </h1>

& also do the same for h2 for the next fragment?

I am re-writting my text on the front page at the mo so it wont be quite the same.


Also, I take it you can have h1 & h2 etc on every page - how can I make the most of these given my current setup - ie is it per your posting on the previous page regarding product name & brochure title?

[harlequin]

yep, actually its not a bad idea for folk who are a little wary of digging too much into actinic templates.

there is a method of inserting html into actinic fragments and products and this works virtually anywhere without even looking at a template...

for the any normal fragment title / description, literally as you type them for normal into actinic, you can use


!!<<h1><FONT FACE="ARIAL" SIZE="+1">all my glow text here </FONT> </h1>>>!

This is actinic's way of letting you control the content using html...

all you have to to is add !!< to the start of your code, and >!! to the end.

as i said, you can use this technique in the brochure titles, brochure descriptions, product titles, product descriptions

it it worth mentioning that using this method is one of the greatest unsung heroes of actinic..

eg..not on a search engine front now, but simple formatting of content all over the place..

in a product description for example you could have..

!!<<ul>
<li>Steve</li>
<li>James</li>
<li>Chris</li>
</ul>>!!

and this has the effect of

Steve
James
Chris


useful for product features that are generally listed this way... try inserting it into one of your product descriptions/titles or brochure fragment titles/descriptions and preview the result...

...actually....truth be told it is really the way you should populate your catalog details if you have time, as all you need to do is create exactly what you want to see in any visual html editor and then copy the code generated into your product desctription (or elsewhere) and add the special !!< >!! tags at either end....

this give you almost complete control over the way in which your products/info displays...including using these elusive H1+2 tags...

Steve

please do call us though if i am being unclear...

anyway, try the above and you will see what i mean..

[theglowcompany]

steve thats ace - thanks for your time - I will apply it - probably all over my site - I'm on a mission to learn SEO & also just starting with Dreamweaver - what with Actinic as well its a right old soup!

But I will have a go at your suggestions in the posting above - it will espacially help with my first paragraph as the fragment title is 'welcome to the glow company' & I dont want to emphasise that but I do want to emphasise the text within the fragment body

Ahh my first little h1 ! :)

Thanks again - been an interesting post (give your fingers a rest!)

[harlequin]

just a last note, whereas you will find no hard and fast rules about heading tags and just how many characters/letters you can have in there, the standard advice is this, when writing the text to go inside, ask yourself, is it a realistic heading...i.e. dont spam the engine by putting a 100 word title in there, or even put a heading tag around a whole 100 word paragraph.....

try to keep it to reasonable proportions and all should be well..

steve

[harlequin]

Hi James, after thinking about this quite hard, I actually think you have done me a big favour in reminding me you can paste html into anywhere in actinic.

Rather than create a range of custom templates for everyone, we shall simply provide a howto document basically explaining our post here and this has two distinct advantages...

One. Customers dont need to touch the Actinic Templates.

Two. It will actually get them used to, and encourage them to use the !!< embed html >!! ability rather than simply providing templates that does the work behind the scenes but teaches them nothing.

So I am very grateful, and have got just as much if not more from this post than you !!

Steve

[theglowcompany]

hi steve, cool thats what forums are about.

I wouldnt mind a copy of the info you have discussed when youve finalised it .

My 1st H1 is now up & plans afoot for an h2 - bring on the hx stork!

Thanks

[harlequin]

a three word keyphrase, as a href, and a reasonable amount of good quality not spammed keywords next to it...

good use of h2 and 3 etc as well...youll want a job soon...

nice one grasshopper :D :D

I have already been encouraging my customers to use this method instead of tons and tons of templates....and it seems to be catching on very easily...

talk again soon no doubt...

[theglowcompany]

steve, you are mistaken h2 isnt used yet but h3 is - a few times -again within the fragment.

I dont want a job - I quit a few days ago & working my notice by learning SEO :)

I have actually just sold myself for a day to advise on SEO on a site - £200 - my time is paying off well:)

[harlequin]

you shouldnt use repeated heading tags...

h1 to h6 once only on each page and the rest of the content just as it is using <b> etc... if you spam the tags the engines hate it as much as anything....i did say amongst the confusing posts before...

best of luck in your new profession.....you snake in the grass :D :D

steve

[theglowcompany]

will change these to <b> as you suggested

Thanks alot