Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
H1 and Schema Codes Set Up Correctly?
-
Greetings:
It was pointed out to me that the h1 tags on my website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) all had exactly the same text and that duplication may be contributing to the very low page authority for most URLs.
The duplicate h1 appears in line 54-54 (see below) of the home page: www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:
itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" style="position:absolute;top:-9999em;">
<span<br>itemprop="name">Metro Manhattan Office Space</span<br>
<img< p="">But the above refers to schema" so is this really duplicate H1 or is there an exception if the H1 is within a schema?
Also, I was told that the company street address and city and state were set up incorrectly as part of an alt tag. However these items also appear as schema in lines 49-68 shown below:
Dangerous for me to perform surgery on the code without being certain about these key items!! Could ask my developer, however they may be uncomfortable considering that they set this up in the 1st place. So the view of neutral professionals would be highly welcome!
itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span<br>itemprop="streetAddress">347 5th Ave #1008
<span<br>itemprop="addressLocality">New York
<span<br>itemprop="addressRegion">NY
<span<br>itemprop="postalCode">10016<div<br>itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
---------------------------------------------------------------------------</div<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></span<br></img<> -
For suggestion 1, I should clarify that you already are using Microdata. Your Microdata is repeating what is already in the page, rather than "tagging" your existing content inline. Microdata is a good tool to use if you are able to tag pieces of content as you are communicating it to a human reader; it should follow the natural flow of what you are writing to be read by humans. This guide walks you through how Microdata can be implemented inline with your content, and it's worth reading through to see what's available and how to step forward with manual implementation of Schema.org with confidence.
Will these solutions remove the duplicate H1 tag?
Whatever CMS or system you are using to produce the hidden microdata markup needs to be changed to remove its attempt entirely. The markup of the content itself is good, but it needs to be combined in with existing content or implemented with JSON+LD so that it is not duplicating the HTML you are showing the user.
Are these options relatively simple for an experienced developer? Is one option superior to the other?
Both should be, but it depends on your strategy. Are you hand-rolling your schema.org markup? Is somebody going into your content and wrapping the appropriate content with the correct microdata? This can be a pain in the butt and time-consuming, especially if they're not tightly embedded with your content production team.
I downloaded the HTML and reviewed the Microdata implementation. I don't mean to sound unkind but it looks like computer-generated HTML and it's pretty difficult to read and manipulate without matching tags properly.
Is one option superior to the other?
Google can read either without issue; they recommend JSON+LD (source).
In your case, I'd also recommend JSON+LD because:
- Your investment in Microdata is not very heavy and appears easy enough to unwind
- The content you want to show users isn't exactly inline with the content you want read by crawlers anyway (for example, your address isn't on the page and visible to readers)
- It's simple enough to write by hand, and there exist myriad options to embed programmatically-generated schema.org content in JSON+LD format
Please review this snippet comparing a Microdata solution and a JSON+LD solution side by side.
PLEASE DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THIS INTO YOUR SITE. It is meant for educational and demonstrative purposes only.
There are comments inline that should explain what's going on: https://gist.github.com/TheDahv/dc38b0c310db7f27571c73110340e4ef
-
Hi Again:
Will option #1 (keeping existing microdata) remove the duplicate h1 tag? Your suggestion listed below:
"So, wherever the
tag with the company name lives that is rendered and shown to the user, ad the "LocalBusiness" itemscope to the parent tag that surrounds it and its content. Basically you'd merge your Schema.org code with the user-facing content"
-
Hi David:
Schema was added to the site discretely provide location data to Google.
You suggested 2 potential solutions:
1. Use Microdata...
2. Use JSON+LD..
Will these solutions remove the duplicate H1 tag?
We are concerned that the low rank of our URLs (80% are 1) are caused by duplicate H1s on each page.
Are these options relatively simple for an experienced developer? Is one option superior to the other?
Thanks for your patience in explaining these options, my programming understanding is limited.
Alan -
I see that you're using CSS to get that markup into the page, but definitely not visible to the user. Am I interpreting that right? If so, it seems like your goal is to get some Schema.org tags into the page to mark up your content as a LocalBusiness.
I have 2 ideas for you:
Use microdata (the markup format you're using now) to mark up your tags inline with your existing content. So, wherever the
tag with the company name lives that is rendered and shown to the user, ad the "LocalBusiness" itemscope to the parent tag that surrounds it and its content. Basically you'd merge your Schema.org code with the user-facing content
Use JSON+LD markup instead. You can get the same information "repeated" but the JSON+LD markup isn't rendered for users. jsonld.com has a great page with a template you can copy and adjust to suit your business. If you go this route, remove the microdata-laden HTML hidden off the page with the inline CSS and replace it with the JSON+LD wrapped in . Google also has some great documentation around the LocalBusiness type.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to update Schema markup code to all pages of my website ?
Hi all i have a website with 1k+ pages and i have schema markup code for reviews and FAQ's, so need help in knowing how to update code for all pages in one go without using tag manager as updating to all pages manually is similar to impossible, let me know is there any way out to achieve the results and my website is built on word-press, awaiting for earliest reply......... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atiagr1232 -
Ogranization Schema/Microformat for a content/brand website | Travel
Hi, One of our clients have a website specific to a place, for eg. California Tourism in which they publish local information related to tourism, blogs & other useful content. I want to understand how useful is to publish Organization Schema on such website mentioning the actual Organization, which in this case is a Travel Agency? Or any other schema would fit in for such websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ds9.tech0 -
Schema types for webinars, infographics, datasheets, product videos and eBooks
Hi, I’m looking to add Schema markup to my company pages’s webinar page (recording past webinars) and data sheets, infographics, product videos, eBooks/white papers. For eBooks, I am primarily referring to a landing page with a gate to download a PDF document. I’m trying to determine the best markup type: For Webinars, I’ve seen suggestions to use “Event” type but that seems appropriate for future events, not something like a recorded webinar, which is not time-sensitive, unlike a live event. However, I see a StackOverflow forum to use http://schema.org/recordedIn for recorded webinars. For eBooks and White Papers, I see a few potential schema types: https://schema.org/DigitalDocument https://schema.org/CreativeWork http://schema.org/EBook (or https://schema.org/Book and then book format type of Ebook)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteHat10 -
How do I know if I am correctly solving an uppercase url issue that may be affecting Googlebot?
We have a large e-commerce site (10k+ SKUs). https://www.flagandbanner.com. As I have begun analyzing how to improve it I have discovered that we have thousands of urls that have uppercase characters. For instance: https://www.flagandbanner.com/Products/patriotic-paper-lanterns-string-lights.asp. This is inconsistently applied throughout the site. I directed our website vendor to fix the issue and they placed 301 redirects via a rule to the web.config file. Any url that contains an uppercase character now displays as a lowercase. However, as I use screaming frog to monitor our site, I see all these 301 redirects--thousands of them. The XML sitemap still shows the the uppercase versions. We have had indexing issues as well. So I'm wondering what is the most effective way to make sure that I'm not placing an extra burden on Googlebot when they index our site? Should I have just not cared about the uppercase issue and let it alone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webrocket0 -
Is a 301 Redirect and a Canonical Tag on Uppercase to Lowercase Pages Correct?
We have a medium size site that lost more than 50% of its traffic in July 2013 just before the Panda rollout. After working with a SEO agency, we were advised to clean up various items, one of them being that the 10k+ urls were all mixed case (i.e. www.example.com/Blue-Widget). A 301 redirect was set up thereafter forcing all these urls to go to a lowercase version (i.e. www.example.com/blue-widget). In addition, there was a canonical tag placed on all of these pages in case any parameters or other characters were incorporated into a url. I thought this was a good set up, but when running a SEO audit through a third party tool, it shows me the massive amount of 301 redirects. And, now I wonder if there should only be a canonical without the redirect or if its okay to have tens of thousands 301 redirects on the site. We have not recovered yet from the traffic loss yet and we are wondering if its really more of a technical problem than a Google penalty. Guidance and advise from those experienced in the industry is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Schema markup for video playlists?
We're adding schema markup for all of our videos, but some videos exist only in a playlist (all integrated into one URL, and loaded after a javascript call). Per Google: "Make sure that your video and schema.org markup are visible without executing any JavaScript or Flash." https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2413309?hl=en So we know the current implementation won't work for schema markup... What's the best practice for adding schema markup for video playlists? Should we host all of these videos on individual URLs (but then they appear twice) or is there some other workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark
I have encountered some issue with 301 redirect and htaccess file. I need to redirect the following url: http://www.domain.com/?specifications=colours/page/3 to: http://www.domain.com/colours The 301 redirect command I wrote in htaccess file is as follow: Redirect 301 /?specifications=colours/page/3 http://www.domain.com/colours And it doesn't work at the moment. What is the correct way to set up 301 redirect here? Your help will be sincerely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robotseo0 -
How Many Characters in an H1?
Hi, How long can the text within an H1 tag area be? Should it ideally be 1-2 words or can it be a full sentence? Or more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0