Page titles as H1 tags

[DigitalDarren]

My website has been built using wordpress.

We've gone to great lengths to optimise each page and use the correct H-tag structure. However, I've noticed when crawling the site that the wordpress page titles are being highlighted as H1 tags even though they aren't visible on the page.

When we build a new page on our site, we need to fill in the title/heading section at the top, but this is more for internal purposes. When we build out the page then that's when we set the H1 title for the page which is visible to users.

Is this going to be an issue for us in terms of SEO - both from the point of view that the search engine may pick up we have two H1 tags, but also would it count as hiding text from the page?

 

[UKSBD]

The way a lot of Wordpress themes treat titles is a joke.
You either need to find a better them or better still, just edit the files that do this.

 

[DigitalDarren]

I'm not a web developer myself. I create the content/try to ensure that fits best practice.

I use Screaming Frog, which is how I first spotted the “issue” once the developers delivered the site.

If I look at the page source I can see:

<nav class="primary-navbar is-hidden" role="navigation"><h1 class="primary-nav--mobile-title">[THIS IS THE PAGE NAME I ENTER VISIBLE IN THE BACK END]</h1>

I was told this wouldn’t be an issue, but I wanted to double check here.

Thanks

 

[jimnotgym]

It is an issue! Can you not just manually change them? It should not be hidden, but better in the mean time You have already found the right code. H1, literally heading one, the most important heading on the page!

You need a developer and a new theme to fix it I'm afraid. My suggestion is to find an agency that has decent in house SEO expertise, then they have no-one to blame but themselves. Now you have a great test site to interview devs with, see if they identify your issue...

 

[UKSBD]

Wordpress does 2 things very well;

Makes developers lazy

Turns script kiddies in to developers

 

[jimnotgym]

+ 1 to that UKSBD, but that is the same of all CMS I feel. You should see some of the rubbish firms that have migrated from Wordpress to Magento to make catastrophically unsafe ecommerce sites. "We pay for PCI compliant servers and use a payment gateway so don't have to do PCI", I heard recently.

I personally don't enjoy using a CMS at all, that's why my site is compiled static pages (its a bit rough and ready at the moment btw). I write the articless in markdown, and have some scripts to compile them and add a templated header and footer (using bootstrap).

The long and the short of it is, if you want good development you need good developers. Wordpress can't make a good site on its own

 

[StevePoster]

Wordpress is always spoon feeding the programmers and I'm not surprised if these developers is usually caught sleeping in their working station.

 

[ukbf0001]

What Theme are you using ?
Do you have the option that says dont show Page Title on Page ticked ?
Usually your page title is displayed as H1 heading on the the page - unless you have specified otherwise.

I have a system that works for me fine using rank tracker and I build my own WP themes - pages get indexed exactly how I want them to

 

[DhruvSoft]

Lot's of people are asking this question that is Title or H1 should be identical or not.

The best answer is that it should be consistent but not identical, According to Google News, you probably want to keep them almost exactly the same. But with normal Google web search, having them close is fine.

Personally, I like to use a more explanatory but shorter headline with my stories here and a more keyword based title so that people who are looking for help with this topic can find it in Google. But often, the titles here and H1s here are consistent, maybe not exactly identical.

 

[Alan]

This thread has been dead for several months and you answer isn't actually related to the question.