Please fix this SEO mistake

  • Resolved christofu

    (@christofu)


    5 years, 3 months ago

    Hi there,

    I am setting up a website with Olsen Light.
    When checking the H tags for SEO, I realize that h1 is used for the website name in the header, which is wrong for SEO.
    For example it is “OLSEN” in your demo, which is an image and make it worse by the way.
    And then only h2 is used for post titles.

    As stated by Neil Patel, h1 is extremely important for SEO and should reflect a short description of the page.
    The common practice and probably the most efficient one is to use post titles with h1 tag (which should be the ONLY h1 tag), meaning removing the h1 tag from the header.

    Source of Neil Patel’s article explaining everything about h1 tag and how important it is regarding SEO.

    I think this an important fix that should be taken into consideration.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Fotis

    (@markwaregr)

    5 years, 3 months ago

    Hi there,
    thank you for your suggestion. We are constantly updating Olsen Light to provide the best practices for SEO and performance. We have your suggestion in mind for future updates.

    For now you can easily remove in header.php in this

    	<h1><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url() ); ?>">
	<?php if ( get_theme_mod( 'logo', get_template_directory_uri() . '/images/logo.png' ) ): ?>					
<?php else: ?>
<?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</a>
</h1>

    code the <h1> and </h1> tags.

    Open the default editor and then navigate to the /themes/olsenlight/ folder to find the file.
    If you decide to proceed with this modification I would suggest you create a child theme, copy over the files you are editing and make the modifications there. This will allow your changes to survive future theme updates. If you directly edit the theme’s files, all changes will be lost once you update.

    Have a look at this guide to learn more about child themes and how to create one http://www.cssigniter.com/ignite/beginners-guide-child-themes/

    Let me know if you need additional changes to adjust your SEO performance.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Fotis.
    Thread Starter christofu

    (@christofu)

    5 years, 3 months ago

    Hi Fotis,

    Thanks a lot for your quick answer.
    My link to Neil Patel’s article has been deleted due to moderation, here it is again, hope it’ll work. It contains very valuable informations for anyone interested about h1 tags relating to SEO optimization.

    Thanks for your suggestions, here’s what I did:

    1. Creating child theme. I personally ended up using a plugin that worked perfectly. In my case I used Child Theme Generator (compatible with latest version of wordpress which is 5.0.2 at the time of this post)
    2. Copy paste header.php from olsen-light folder to the new olsen-light-child folder.
      Then edit the one (header.php) from the new olsen-light-child folder.
      Then delete h1 tag, for me it was something like this:
      <h1 itemprop="name">
      And
      </h1>
    3. Replacing the h2 tags by h1 tags in the post titles by doing this:
      Copy and paste single.php from olsen-light folder to the new olsen-light-child folder.
      Then edit the one (single.php) from the new olsen-light-child folder.
      Then change h2 tag to h1 tag, for me it looked like this:

      <h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">
	<?php the_title(); ?>
</h2>

      To change to:

      <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">
	<?php the_title(); ?>
</h1>

    I personally also removed the h3 tag from the footer (footer.php) using the same method.

    Et voilà !

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by christofu.
    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by christofu.
    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by christofu.
    Fotis

    (@markwaregr)

    5 years, 3 months ago

    Thank you so much for sharing!
    Let me know if you need additional help on this.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Fotis.
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Please fix this SEO mistake’ is closed to new replies.