OK so I have been working on a new blog design and I'm trying to integrate Header tags where possible to improve the SEO of the design, but I have found that I'm in a situation where that the parts of the page (like post title) that I want to place in H1 tags are further down the page, and the there are other headings that I'd also like to place in header tags (H2 & H3 tags) that are further up the page, and I'm in a situation where my header tags really could be a bit all over the place. Do you think Google would frown upon having H1 tags further down a page and having H2 & H3 tags integrated both above and below the H1 tags and out of order?
So we have an H1 tag which is supposed to say that the text within that tag has more importance than others. And the H2 and H3 tags while still having importance are lower in the hierarchy when compared to the H1 tag. If you do not want to confuse the GoogleBot and achieve the greatest optimisation for your site while retaining the same structure, you should probably use negative margins so that the part with the H1 tag comes first in the HTML code followed by your other tags
I don't think that would have an impact on your SERP. Is there any reason for doing so? Will styling the header tags with CSS helps?
I will be styling them with CSS. As for why the H1 tag appears after the H2 & H3 tags is just a situations of the most relevant and accurate phrase of text that sums up a page appears lower on the page, so I figured that it should be the one that still recieves the H1 tag. Personally I only use H1 tags once on a page, and tend to use H2 and H3 tags only a couple of times at most.
OK here's a new question - do you think it might be an issue if no H1 tags are used on a page that uses H2 and H3 tags?
Put it this way what's the meaning of a H3 tag without a H1 tag? It's relative importance we're talking about and in the absence of a definitive comparison, it's meaningless.
I'm not sure if i understand this correctly? Are you talking about the default font size given to H3 tags? If you are, then CSS can be used to format the tags as you want them to appear - so you can use a H1 tag and format it as H3 - if you understand what i mean. In the presence of a H1 tag, the H3 tag will have less importance. However although in the absence of a H1 tag, the H3 tag is objectively right it is undoubtedly incorrect semantically.
Yes but Google has often stated they aren't overly concerned with semantics, so perfect code isn't my highest concern (especially seeing I'm not personally designing or code the design) I'm more interested in the SEO effects. So I guess a better question - is having H3 tags minus the presence of H1 tags likely to result in better search results than just having the text in the H3 tags just resized the traditional way and not having header tags at all on the page?
Here's a better answer - tags like H1,H2,H3, bold, italics puts more emphasis on the text it surrounds, therefore it will add more weight and increase your rankings for the keyword used. So yes, in that specific situation, having the H3 tag will have more benefit (although not a lot) than not having it.