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So I have been looking into this for a while now and can’t find any solid answers. When using screen options for different devices Google still sees the headers even if the user does not. I can’t have multiple H1s and H2s. Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated.
I’m trying to figure out the same thing. I know SEO tools like Moz register the multiple H1 tags regardless of the screen options. SEO WordPress plugins like Yoast also register it as duplicate content. Which would lead me to believe that search engines would register it as duplicate content as well.
But I would love to get a second opinion on this.
From an SEO perspective it’s okay, and often ideal, to have multiple H2s on a page so long as they are distinctly different and fit within the proper HTML scheme of your page. However, it is probably a good idea to only have one H1. And it is a bad idea to have duplicate content of any kind. So if these headers across different screen options are being indexed as duplicate content then that cause a page to get penalized by search engines.
To be absolutely safe, I guess the answer would be to try to come up with a design that fits all screen sizes and doesn’t require use of the screen options feature. Which understandably isn’t possible for everyone.
But as a rule of thumb it’s always best to design a page for mobile since Google prioritizes your site’s rank based on its experience on mobile over desktop.
It would be awesome though if screen options prevented crawl bots from simultaneously ranking different sizes. A possible workaround would be modify our H1 and H2 tag in each screen size while still retaining its keywording. If the modifications are enough it would prevent the headers from being indexed as duplicate content.
If you fetch it Google absolutely recognizes the multiple headers. I was able to work around it all with some creative CSS but why even have the feature? It’s a bit misleading to think that’s the recommendation. Would love to hear some more input on this.
Hi,
Thank you for the inquiry.
The screen option is added purely for aesthetic purposes, so it doesn’t take into account anything related to SEO or your page structure. As @JoeSurf suggested, you should design the page in a manner in which you don’t have to add multiple h1 tags to prevent content duplication. Search engines can still detect headings added in a page even if it’s not visible.
Best regards,
Ismael
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