Use Of H1 Tags
-
I just have a quick question. I have seen a few people mention that the use of more than 1 H1 tag has little bearing on things.
I am trying to sort out a site for a friend and it has 2 H1 tags. My issue is that it is ranking for a quite competitive keyword (don't know how as the whole site layout is a total mess) but in my efforts to clean up the site I am wondering if I should actually reduce the No of H1 Tags to 1 or leave 'as is' for fear of breaking something.
Thanks
Paul
-
I wouldn't worry about 2 H1 tags if that's how the page works naturally. It's more important to structure your headers in the correct order, so don't have a H2 before you've had a H1, for example.
See Google's Matt Cutts on the issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM
HTML5 might be changing things as there are more tags to specify page sections. You probably don't have to worry about that yet though.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I think i will go ahead and remove the H1. Although the site uses CSS it is pretty crap all in all so I might as well change it now as we try and sort the site out.
I just wanted to be sure that I would not trigger something by removing one of them.
Thanks
Paul
-
Hi Paul
As you'll probably know, the H1 tag has a lot less of an influence on the Googlebot nowadays. IF it were to come across a site with like, 8 H1s there might be a slight chance of it thinking "this site is over-optimising", but two H1s on a page shouldn't have any risk of doing this.
In super-onpage-best-practice-land, I'd say if you could get rid of one of the H1s, I'd do so - as having just one H1 would let Google be a bit more certain what the page was about. But of course, the H1 is not the be all and end all and the Googlebot will almost certainly detect what your page is about even if it does have two conflicting H1s.
Consider as well the design of the website. If the site uses a CSS theme that makes H1s just seem a lot more useful to use, I wouldn't be worried about using 2.
You certainly wouldn't break anything by removing an H1 - just deduce whether it's necessary. If it comes at a severe detriment to style and the look of the page, I wouldn't bother. If not, then yeah, removing an H1 may help a bit, but the effect won't be huge.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Content & Tags
I've recently added tags to my blog posts so that related blog posts are suggested to visitors. My understanding was that my robot.txt was handling duplicate content so thought it wouldn't be an issue but after Moz crawled by site this week is reported 56 issues of duplicate content in my blog. I'm using Shopify, so I can edit the robot.txt file but is my understanding correct that if there are 2 or more tags then they will be ignored? I've searched the Shopify documents and forum and can't find a straight answer. My understanding of SEO is fairly limited. Disallow: /blogs/+
Content Development | | Tangled
Disallow: /blogs/%2B
Disallow: /blogs/%2b0 -
Can a rel author tag point to a Google+ business page
I’m trying to get my blog posts to show with rich snippets but they are a collaborative effort from our staff and as such are posted under our business name. We do have some guest bloggers who write under their own name and we use the author tags to show this. Is there a similar way to do this with a business?
Content Development | | mark_baird0 -
I use a CDN
Hi there my sitemap is @ www.mobbly.com/sitemap.xml and images are stored on cdn.mobbly.com I have verified cdn.mobbly.com but as there is no sitemap apart from mobbly.com/sitemap.xml google has 3000 images in sitemap but only 289 indexed - was all when all were on the same domain any advice would be good
Content Development | | jimmy1640 -
Should we be using a blog for news
Our domain has/had a blog on a seperate subdomain. However we were a little slack in always keeping this up to date when we are particularly busy. Rather than reinstating the blog, I have been adding all our new articles directly onto the website rather than as blog posts. Is there any advantage from an SEO perspective to posting articles to a blog rather than as content on a site?
Content Development | | dsmdesign0 -
Using Google Blogger
Hi, On my website I have a specific blog section, which like most people is linked to Wordpress. I have been advised that to achieve better SEO its also a good idea to use Google Blogger, because it will link back to your website from Google. Obviously we don't want to submit the same articles to Google blogger or else that would be duplicated, but is this something that could benefit and is anyone else doing this? Thanks!
Content Development | | Pulsar0 -
Using syndicated content / videos
Hi all, We are looking at using some syndicated video content on our main category pages. We are an pharmacy and offer prescription medicines (Yes we are NHS registered and no we don't sell generic products). I want to use the videos to increase the UX for the category pages and increase stickiness......however i am a little worried about how Google will see this. We don't have the time or budget to create our own videos but the rest of the content around them is all ours. The videos are provided by the NHS so they are good quality content and should add value to the consumer. Will big G stiff us for doing this?
Content Development | | nicc19760 -
Noindex,Follow on custom tags
So i have this code: ID, 'release_date', '* '.$theme_review_tag_1_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
Content Development | | Dussk
ID, 'genre', '* '.$theme_review_tag_2_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'rating', '* '.$theme_review_tag_3_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'director', '* '.$theme_review_tag_4_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'producer', '* '.$theme_review_tag_5_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'screenwriter', '* '.$theme_review_tag_6_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'studio', '* '.$theme_review_tag_7_singular_name.': ', ', ', '')); } ?>
ID, 'starring', '* How do I make those tags noindex,follow because it generates me uplicate content. Thanks0 -
H1 tag in Blank in Wordpress website
Good evening, I have noticed using some h1 checkers, that my primary h1 tag is blank. I manually introduced an h1 with my main keywords, but system recognises as 2 different h1 tags, and therefore it could be harmful for my SEO purposes. I created my wordpress website using Artisteer. Is there any specific way (or plugin) to change this primary h1 tag so it wont appear as blank? My site is www.outletspain.net Thanks in advance Maria Jesus
Content Development | | goperformancelabs0