: Penalties for "missing" Header tags Running my site through Niel Patel's SEO Tester gives me multiple errors on <h4> elements being too short. Thing is, the elements are too short (length

@Heady270

Strict rules about what should be in heading tags is an SEO strategy from five years ago. Even then empty <h4> tags wouldn't have caused any SEO problems. Google has long said that it doesn't penalize for poor HTML code, nor does it reward validating code.

These days Google is rendering pages to see the content. I've seen evidence that it doesn't even matter if you use heading tags. Styling a <div> or <span> with large bold text at the top of the page is just as good as using an <h1> for Google.

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