Where did my h1's go?

[Ho Ho Bird]

Sorry to be asking what is probably a very basic question, but none of my pages seems to have any h1 'tags(?...is that the right term?)...or h2's etc

Is this something I've perhaps overwritten from an early stage, or should I have done something when starting-out to ensure the pages are structured correctly?

(Once I've got a page that I like I tend to just copy and paste it, making the changes I require....so if I screwed something-up early doors I'll just be repeating my error).

I was looking for them after reading their importance in SEO, where I get some very strange results (some pages do much better than expected, others are hopeless).

Any gentle prods as to what I might do next would be appreciated. I've looked at several of my pages and can't see any so you can probably pick at random from any at hohobird.com
As is probably evident from my question this is my first go at building a site and I'm rather just picking it up as I go along!

Many thanks.

[grantglendinnin]

Your <h1> tags don't exist, instead you have used font styles - what should typically be <h1> is <b> in your current design.

Should be quite easily rectified if you know what you're doing - plenty free guides knocking about so should be an easy task.

[pinbrook]

In my view you need to consider your H1 tags as part of the whole SEO strategy and ensure you do not over use them.

I find H1 useful on SPP thus on http://www. hohobird . com/acatalog/Art_Nouveau_Mantle_clock.html

I notice your product name has this code

<b><span style="font-size: 14px;">Stunning Art Nouveau Brass Inlaid Mantle Clock</span></b>

I would wrap H1 tag around the product name so you have your key phrase for that page made more prominant. This also keeps with the premise of one H1 tag per page. I suspect the font size is something you've added, so ditch the bold, ditch the 14 and create a style with these attibutes and call it H1 (check you haven't got any H1 tags anywhere else that do not want this style though)

Where you have multiple products per page you could use H2 - but this is debatable.

[Ho Ho Bird]

Thanks Jo And Grant. As I suspected I may have messed something up in the first few days when I was trying to get the look 'right' and not realising I was undoing much of Actinic core strength!

Now I've done that, can you point me into the 'how' I undo my wrongs, or at least specifically where I can find a thread that may teach me (I've done some searching before writing but I don't think anyone has been so daft before now!).

Finally, I'm assuming I'll have to go through page by page (not a disaster, just a little time consuming). Is there any way I can use the 'use parent' or something in the menus to speed by progress

Thanks in advance.

[grantglendinnin]

You change one layout - all pages which use this layout on your site take on the new layout change.

So edit your product layout(s) first, taking plenty backups along the way...

The W3C Schools HTML Tutorials may be of use.

[pinbrook]

TBH I'm not sure that Actinic puts H1s on product pages by default, so you probably haven't undone something significant.

All you need to do is locate the product layout and change the styles as i indicated. If you use the same product layout for your SPP this will mean just the one change as it will cascade.

You will need to change the actinic css, but be aware when you change the H1 tag you will be changing ALL H1 tags throughout the site.

[leehack]

Croccy's right, product name is a H2 as standard, with a H1 only used on headline fragments as standard I believe. I favour section heading as h1, product name as h2, price or related product titles as h3 and footer links as h4.

[pinbrook]

Sorry Grant, i'm not trying to post on top of you, it is just taking me longer to reply than you..

[Duncan Rounding]

Interestingly H tags are about the only tags that are still used almost exclusively for SEs. (apart from perhaps accessibility)

[grantglendinnin]

Sorry Grant, i'm not trying to post on top of you, it is just taking me longer to reply than you..

No rest for the wicked

Interestingly H tags are about the only tags that are still used almost exclusively for SEs. (apart from perhaps accessibility)

Hence why Actinic's standard themes are 10 year old designs to slipstream with the old habits of SE's Wonder if there's any new themes getting launched with V10...a clean XHTML/CSS design would be nice...

[leehack]

a clean XHTML/CSS design would be nice...

Come on GG, off the clouds and back to work now.

[Ho Ho Bird]

Thanks everyone for your generous help. I've made some progress.

2 things you may just be able to guide me further on:

1. I'm able to edit the layout(s) and add the <h1> tags either manually, or by selecting h1 from the drop down menu in the 'edit appearance' box. When I do this, the font it is giving me is too large. I can change this manually using the other options in the 'edit appearance' box.
My question, where do I (can I) change the 'master' font settings actinic uses for H1 etc?

2. Using the h1, h2 tags has the impact (especially in fragments) of creating a large gap between the title and the text. I think it by trying to eliminate these gaps that led me to mess about with the settings back in the early days.
My question, can I (with my limited skills) reduce the gap between the h1 title and the text below?

[leehack]

Both questions are CSS based answers, if you have no CSS experience, then probably best to get someone to do that for you. The edit appearance method is the worst of the worst, negating all of the advantages of CSS completely.

In simple terms you can create a class in the stylesheet that holds all of the styling you want. That class then gets applied the html element you wish to style. So:

.peter {
font-size: 14px;
}

would be a class called Peter setting font size to 14px, you could then apply that to a heading tag:

<h1 class="peter">This is an example heading</h1>

The above h1 tag would then be sized at 14px via your class.

That's a simple way of looking at things, it can get far more complicated, it's an area where you either need to read up for hours or get someone to do it for you, it's an area where a little knowledge can be quite dangerous.

[Ho Ho Bird]

Thanks Lee. Sounds too dangerous for me. Is it not just possible for me to edit the current default settings for h1 somewhere in Actinic?

h1 is coming out by default with white text which isn't great (!) against my white background. h2 and h3 are fine, but I'd like to use h1 once on a page.

[leehack]

You can do yes, open up the stylesheet from the design tab and scroll down until you see the heading declarations in there. There are some global ones and some specific ones for certain areas, they are all together though in one area so should be easy to find. Backup before you have a play, and pay attention to how a stayle starts and ends with the squiggles - {}.

A typical one would be - h2.product { blah blah }

That would then be used as <h2 class="product">Product Name</h2> within your product layout.