Comments on: Measuring the Value of Page Elements for Search Engine Rankings

By: Orange County SEO

Orange County SEO — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:44:49 +0000

How is it that the H1 not indexed or considered as a ranking factor? I know it’s not important as it used to be, but it’s still, like, the 4th most important page element on a web page… Really good article though, I just find myself a bit surprised. =)

Cheers.

By: David Jones

David Jones — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:51:18 +0000

Bit late to this post but very very interesting. As others have said i can understand why google might have devalued the H1 Tag. Going to try an experiment now on a couple of different sites with your search findings to see what results i experience by doing some variations myself.

By: Pune Website

Pune Website — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:28:49 +0000

Surprise, Surprise! We thought we were all taking Google for a ride using H1 tags. The more I think of it, the more it makes sense that Google will come back with something like this.
H2 is now the new H1. I don’t think anyone else would have heard of this. Thanks for taking the time to experiment and analyze this.

By: Bridgend Web Design

Bridgend Web Design — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:55:55 +0000

I suppose it’s not surprising the the H1 tag will have been lowered in value, not so much because of SEO efforts but because the common practice is to put the site’s name and logo in the H1 on every page, with that particular page’s heading being relegated to a H2.

Still, I hadn’t anticipated this and it’s actually going to be hurting my sites, as I’ve always used H1 for the logo on the index page, replacing it with an identically styled div on interior pages so I could use the H1 for the page heading. This would appear to me to be the most semantically-correct way of structuring a page and it’s disappointing that the search engines don’t see it that way.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:58:35 +0000

Thanks for clarifying the weight that each of these aspects have on the rankings!

I always new that the title took the number one spot but with regards to the following subheadings, it was a bit of a mystery.

It is almost a waste of time including the meta keywords these days by the looks of your tests.

By: Rusty Bishop

Rusty Bishop — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:35:30 +0000

Thanks for this post. It took me a while to understand your experiment, though. Once, I got that you were only placing the words into the exact position (e.g., H1, title) and everything else was meaningless text, it all came together for me.

As a scientist, I can really appreciate this type of web experiment.

My question is have you applied this knowledge to a contract and seen similar results in Organic Search results WITHOUT using the site command?

For example, have you refocused key phrases into Title>H2>H3>meta description and seen clients move up in the results? Or more important get more relevant clicks?

Thanks for your answer

By: Natacha Wolford

Natacha Wolford — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:59:05 +0000

Wow thats really mind blowing (at least for the seo world). I like many other site owners thought that Meta was in the past. thanks for clearing that up.

By: Vancouver Homes For Sale

Vancouver Homes For Sale — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:14:42 +0000

Wow! — I love the genius of your simple and effective experiment. It makes much sense in the light of the big guys wanting to deliver the best search results based on content, and not on manipulated elements. I’m off to do my own experiments and also permanently implement an item or two that you’ve shared. Thanks! John

By: Aurora Designs

Aurora Designs — Sat, 22 May 2010 10:54:59 +0000

There are a lot of web developers still belive that meta tags are the magical wond which will put their site on top of yahoo or google. This article will help them alot.
Very organised article
Thank you

By: USA@loanmodification

USA@loanmodification — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:39:46 +0000

I was under the impression that if you did well by applying a few H1, sitemap etc to ones site. I could reach top of the search engine. Thank you for proving me wrong on certain areas.

By: Teknoloji

Teknoloji — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:06:12 +0000

thanks for great article, it helped me, In real terms does it matter what Yahoo does if Google has the market pretty much sewn up

By: lomac

lomac — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:03:51 +0000

Why then does google tell us that we should use H1? Also I thought the URL counted more

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 17 May 2010 22:44:54 +0000

I would of never thought that h2 would rank higher than h1. that is very surprising to me. Thank you for the great post. but at the same time I hate you. Now I am forced to go back through all my sites and see what I can improve on. But I guess it will all pay off in the end, so thanks.

By: jon4god

jon4god — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:10:18 +0000

Thank you! If it were not for your post, it would be rewriting the headers h2 to h1.

By: Tattoos For Girls

Tattoos For Girls — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:31:37 +0000

H1 after H2 in google ? hmm… Even H3 ? Im not sure about this, I must reed mor in the net in this topic..maybe youre have right…

By: Nigel

Nigel — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:38:45 +0000

Very interesting post. H2 higher than H1, sort of goes against everything I’ve learnt.

By: Jason Edge

Jason Edge — Sat, 15 May 2010 10:20:47 +0000

In real terms does it matter what Yahoo does if Google has the market pretty much sewn up?

By: xakbox

xakbox — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:25:53 +0000

thanks for great article, it helped me .. thanks ..

By: Kurt Clarke

Kurt Clarke — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:07:41 +0000

I always though h1 took precedence :/

By: risaleforum

risaleforum — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:59:00 +0000

perfectt admin thank

By: digitürk

digitürk — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:44:34 +0000

One of the very few places where I got the ranking factors for all the three search engines-Google,Yahoo and Bing, and the explanation was so lucid..thanks a lot for sharing the secrets with us.

By: GüzelSözler

GüzelSözler — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:41:51 +0000

Thanks! It’s a good resource and I have saved it to my favorites list and I’ll be sure to visit time and again

By: Сергей

Сергей — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:45:49 +0000

i think that is cool! thank you!

By: techpage

techpage — Tue, 11 May 2010 07:45:04 +0000

VERY informative seo tips

By: Blog de tecnologia

Blog de tecnologia — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:27:10 +0000

Very cool! Thanks you!