How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
-
I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings."
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
-
This was a question that was recently raised by somebody else here on the Q&A and you can see the full discussion here. Although the question is slightly different, the answer is the same: it depends which HTML version you are using. If it's HTML4 or XHTML, only use one h1 per page, but if you are using HTML5 you can have one per section. So you could have one in your
<nav>, on in your, one in each of the
<aside>s on your page and one in your
<footer>.
The reason for this is that for HTML4 search engines look at headings to give the page hierachy - remember they only had
s to separate content areas - but HTML5 uses the new semantic elements like
<header>and <fotter>to work out hierarchy, with headings only affecting hierachy within one of those tags.</fotter></header>
</footer>
</aside>
</nav>
-
Sorry, but have to disagree a bit as having multiple H1's isn't the issue that most think it is, or once was. One of my own sites has 20 H1 tags (purely by chance as it is a single page design, but it's a long story), and that site ranks top 3 for a number of highly competitive phrases with almost half a billion results.
No, it isn't best practice and I wouldn't advocate doing this, but it isn't a major ranking factor.
-Andy
-
Your header images should not have h1 tags in them as well because then every page is going to have the same h1 tag with the same keyword - making it so that your are optimizing against that keyword on all your other pages.
-
Well said iSTORM! To add using images in H1 tags is not very search engine friendly or natural approach. H1 tags are to be used for text only, so adding images may not work to your advantage.
-
Google looks at h1 tags as clues to what the page's content is about. If you have multiple h1 tags with different keywords then it is difficult for Google to contextualize the page.
Best practice: one h1 tag with the keyword or theme you are trying to optimize for.
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
-
Should I change our main category pages to product listing pages?
With the thought of improving user experience, as well as rankings in Google, I'm considering changing our main category pages to product listing pages (with sub-categories remaining, still). These main category pages are very standard and don't link to any informational content, such as buyers guides, etc. What's driven this is the latest Google core update. I've noticed our main competitor (who we were out-ranking before... but not now) now uses this approach. I can see the benefit from a user perspective, i.e. less clicks to reach products. What's the pros/cons from an SEO point of view, please? Could the potential duplication of content be an issue? For context, we have about 2,000 products and website is on Magento 2.
On-Page Optimization | | alifeofjoy1 -
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
What to do with multiple forms and thank you pages
Hi Everyone, I'm wondering what to do with form and thank you pages. I asked a question a long time ago about the contact page as noindex and was told by people that its better to leave it and write content for it and thats what we did. Now I have a client that does self storage and they have 4 locations and each location has a reservation page with a basic form but no content. Each page also redirects to a thank you page with tracking codes. There's a total of 6 "thank you" pages with different codes (this was done by yellow book). 4 "reserve your storage pages", 2 pages to pay for storage with iframes to 3rd party payment portals. I was told to noindex these pages but I'm not sure so I'm asking here. I was also told to nofollow and remove them from sitemaps. Thanks Aron
On-Page Optimization | | aronwp0 -
Keyword Appearing on Home Page - Moz Page Grader
Hi Today I entered www.partydomain.co.uk through the Moz Page Grader and found that the Home Page is Ranked B. I noticed that an Area we could improve on is the amount of times we are using our main keyword "Fancy Dress" on the home page. Please can you take a look at www.partydomain.co.uk and scroll to the bottom of the page were the tabs are containing losts of content. I am thinking about removing all of thoose Tabs. Our Competitors dont have any content as such on the home page and are ranking higher than Party Domain for "fancy dress" What do you think ? remove all the tabs to be like the others that rank better? Or cut the text right down ? Thanks Adam
On-Page Optimization | | AMG1000 -
H1 Tag on Homepage
The name of our company is LEDSupply; our tag line is: "For All Your LED Project Needs!". Currently the H1 Tag for our homepage is LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs - Low Prices, Big Bulk Discounts & Free Shipping My questions is should I break out everything but the tag line so the new H1 tag is: LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs! Which is better in your opinion? Here is a link to our homepage: http://www.ledsupply.com/ Thanks! -Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | saultienut0 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
Using display: none in h1 tag
Hello, For the h1 tag on my landing page, I currently have 'Welcome to Edison Ford'. I was thinking of adding the keyword I'm targeting (property maintenance bristol) to the h1 tag which would look like this 'Welcome to Edison Ford Property Maintenance Bristol' Would it be a good idea to wrap the property maintenance bristol part in a span tag and add 'display: none;' to the styling? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | PeterAllen910 -
What does this mean on first step up setting up a campaign? "Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here."
I am BRAND new to this, and setting up my first campaign. I choose subdomain, and entered www.pdsaz.com. This is the message I receive: We have detected that the domain www.pdsaz.com and the domain pdsaz.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here.
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0