Multiple H1 Tags on Page
-
Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?
-
Hello Chad,
Absolutely, depending on how you structure your tags. The biggest problem with multiple H1's is that using different keywords can confuse Google and Users about what a page is attempting to rank for. If you have multiple keywords you are attempting to rank for, you are better off creating different pages with a small number of H1's optimized to each keyword respectively. This will help Google contextualize the page.
This comes up frequently on Moz Q&A, and opinion has shifted throughout the years, but it is now considered best practice to use a single keyword/H1 tag for each page for best ranking potential.
Hope this helps,
Rob
-
Just like you want to have a single title tag you want to optimally have a single H1. Use of the H1 (and H2 H3s for that matter) helps Google to understand the hierarchy of information on your page. By having multiple H1s you are potentially not giving as clear of a signal of what text is most important on your page. It is also good for users as they can clearly and quickly see what your page is about and increase the chances of staying on your page, thereby reducing bounce rate and potentially increasing conversion rate.
That said, regarding rankings, this all depends. I can't promise that if you fix your H1 that you will rank #1 - there are just too many other factors to consider. Can you rank well with having multiple H1s, sure. Google still may be able to "figure it out".
Still, best practice is to have a single H1 as far as what most SEOs (and SEOs that I respect) recommend and this is what I do on all of my sites.
Some other posts on this topic that are of this ilk:
https://moz.com/community/q/h1-tag
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/in-2014-how-important-is-an-h1-tag-for-seo/
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-peroperly-use-h1-h2-and-h3-tag-on-your-website
http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/heading-elements-and-the-folly-of-seo-expert-ranking-lists/
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
-
Optimization expert suggesting we add Canonical tag to every page on site
Hi guys, We're currently launching a new page, and we have an optimization and technical SEO expert (highly rated on Upwork, very intelligent, has solved complicated issues in the past and improved our Core Web Vitals greatly) suggesting we put canonical tags on every page of site, pointing to itself (other than the case of where canonicals should point to other page, we have those listed separately. Do you guys see a benefit to this? Could it harm us? He says large retailers do this, couldn't quite glean the benefit from it though. Current site ranks well and isn't set up like this. Any insight would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz0 -
Similar pages on a site
Hi I think it was at BrightonSEO where PI DataMetrics were talking about similar pages on a website can cause rankings to drop for your main page. This has got me thinking. if we have a category about jumpers so: example.com/jumpers but then our blog has a category about jumpers, where we write all about jumpers etc which creates a category page example.com/blog/category/jumpers, so these blog category pages have no index put on them to stop them ranking in Google? Thanks in Advance for any tips. Andy
Technical SEO | | Andy-Halliday1 -
Should I change my targeted page?
Currently I have a site where the targeted keywords were on the home page, with links built to the homepage. It has been widely recognised though that Google is looking more and more for specific content on webpages that holds greater relevance to search queries. As such, I switched this targeted page to other created webpages - changing metatags and creating more relevant content for respective keywords. I thought this would improve rankings, however, upon doing this there was a sharp fall in rankings for keywords. Is there anything that I could have done wrong, or can do better so that keywords move back up the rankings?
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
Seomoz pages error
Hi
Technical SEO | | looktouchfeel
I have a problem with seomoz, it is saying my website http://www.clearviewtraffic.com has page errors on 19,680 pages. Most of the errors are for duplicate page titles. The website itself doesn't even have 100 pages. Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks Luke0 -
Two different page authority ranks for the same page
I happened to notice that trophycentral.com and www.trophycentral.com have two different page ranks even though there is a 301 redirect. Should I be concerned? http://trophycentral.com Page Authority: 47 Domain Authority: 42 http://www.trophycentral.com Page Authority: 51 Domain Authority: 42 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
How can I prevent duplicate content between www.page.com/ and www.page.com
SEOMoz's recent crawl showed me that I had an error for duplicate content and duplicate page titles. This is a problem because it found the same page twice because of a '/' on the end of one url. e.g. www.page.com/ vs. www.page.com My question is do I need to be concerned about this. And is there anything I should put in my htaccess file to prevent this happening. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | onlineexpression
Karl0 -
Page with h1 and h1 class=
Hi, If a page in the source code has boht following elements: class="blogg_rubrik">TITLE OF THE PAGE Is that bad for SEO, since the first H1 is empty? Shouldn't a page use only one H1?
Technical SEO | | Ypsilon0