Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Title Tag vs. H1 / H2
-
OK, Title tag, no problem, it's the SEO juice, appears on SERP, etc. Got it.
But I'm reading up on H1 and getting conflicting bits of information ...
- Only use H1 once?
- H1 is crucial for SERP
- Use H1s for subheads
- Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance
So say I've got a blog post with three sections ... do I use H1 three times (or does Google think you're playing them ...)
Or do I create a "big" H1 subhead and then use H2s? Or just use all H2s because H1s are scary?
I frequently use subheads, it would seem weird to me to have one a font size bigger than another, but of course I can adjust that in settings ...
Thoughts?
Lisa
-
Let me add that
- In many cases the title tag will also contain the website's name, as in
<title>Awesome Cool Headline | website name<title></li> <li>A good CMS will let you differentiate between headline in title and headline on the page (the H1)</li> <li>If your website is indexed by Google News the shown headline will be the H1, not the title tag</li> </ul></title>
- In many cases the title tag will also contain the website's name, as in
-
<title>Awesome Cool Headline<title></p> <p><H1>Awesome Cool Headline<H1></p> <p>This looks correct. Then use H2 for subheadings. The title won't get printed on the page so "Awesome Cool Headline" will only show once on the page content.</p></title>
-
OK, getting more information ... I think the issue here is this is for a blog and I'm thinking the Title tag usurps the H1.
For a blog, it would be:
<title>Awesome Cool Headline<title></p> <p><H1>Awesome Cool Headline<H1></p> <p>which would look redundant. So I think I could use the first subhead as an H1 if it was written in a way that was relevant to the story, but I'm guessing best practices are H2. Although if I did that, I'd NEVER have an H1 on my pages unless I was doing a landing page promotion of some sort ... hmmm.</p></title>
-
Ah, so ...
- Title (duh)
- H1 header (use as first subhead after lead graph to set the tone for the piece?)
- H2 for all other subheads
- Set H1 and H2 at the same font style so no one knows the difference.
Can someone give me a good example of an H1? I don't know why I'm a bit stuck on the H1 application, but a few in the wild examples should help. This is truly appreciated guys!
Thanks!
-
Like others have mentioned you should only have one H1. This should appear on the page before any other headings such as h2, h3 etc.
The styling shouldn't matter so the h1 doesn't need to be in a larger font size than the h2's.
-
Of the 4 points you mention you've seen, I'd say the only one that's entirely incorrect is #3.
1. Only use H1 once: True. Think of it like a book title. That's the most important thing, so nothing else should share that prominence.
2. H1 is crucial for SERP: **True. **This is what Google looks to, after your title tag, for information about your page and the content therein. This reaffirms that your metadata, keywords, title, content, etc. are all related - while also showing visitors what this page is about (Google values visitor experience more and more with each update).
3. Use H1s for subheads. False. Think back to #1 - H1 should be reserved only for the 1 absolute most important thing (which should be your title).
4. Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance. Kind of true. Google DOES look beyond this (and even parses your body-text), but with each lowering of prominence / heading, Google gives it less weight. #4 is true in the sense that this weight is lessened significantly, but it's incorrect generally - your content is still very important.
I hope this has been helpful to you! Good luck!
-
Just use H1 one time, matt cutts said in a video that he would like to see only 1 H1 tag on a page.
Create content for better user experience, use headings just for your readers, and don't follow these on page tactics very much. Now everyone knows these techniques, and I don't think Google gives higher weight to these things.
Create content for readers
Use H1 as your Page's Heading(Just one time)
Use H2 where you think it's essential
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 we set up redirects for all deleted TAGS?
We recently found our site had 65,000 tags (yes 65K). In an effort to consolidate these we've started deleting them. MOZ is now reporting a heap of 404 errors for tag pages. These tag pages should not have links to them so not sure how come they're being crawled. Any suggestions from experience in this area would be useful.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Can OG titles be used as a substitute for Meta titles
We use og (open graph) titles in lieu of meta titles. Is there any downside to using just one. Should we be using both og and meta titles on our page. Appreciate any insight. Himanshu
Technical SEO | | patilhimanshu0 -
Robots.txt to disallow /index.php/ path
Hi SEOmoz, I have a problem with my Joomla site (yeah - me too!). I get a large amount of /index.php/ urls despite using a program to handle these issues. The URLs cause indexation errors with google (404). Now, I fixed this issue once before, but the problem persist. So I thought, instead of wasting more time, couldnt I just disallow all paths containing /index.php/ ?. I don't use that extension, but would it cause me any problems from an SEO perspective? How do I disallow all index.php's? Is it a simple: Disallow: /index.php/
Technical SEO | | Mikkehl0 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0 -
How should I shorten my titles?
I've read that page titles can't/shouldn't be more than 70 characters long. Out of around 1,000 products we have about 150 that have legitimate titles that exceed this character limitation. We plan on automatically truncating these. Should I just cut the titles off at 70 characters or should I cut them off and add a "..."? Does it even matter?
Technical SEO | | dbuckles0 -
Redirecting blog.<mydomain>.com to www.<mydomain>.com\blog</mydomain></mydomain>
This is more of a technical question than pure SEO per se, but I am guessing that some folks here may have covered this and so I would appreciate any questions. I am moving from a WordPress.com-based blog (hosted on WordPress) to a WordPress installation on my own server (as suggested by folks in another thread here). As part of this I want to move from the format blog.<mydomain>.com to www.mydomain.com\blog. I have installed WordPress on my server and have imported posts from the hosted site to my own server. How should I manage the transition from first format to the second? I have a bunch of links on Facebook, etc that refer to URLs of the blog..com format so it's important that I redirect.</mydomain> I am running DotNetNuke/WordPress on my own IIS/ASP.Net servers. Thanks. Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Microsite on subdomain vs. subdirectory
Based on this post from 2009, it's recommended in most situations to set up a microsite as a subdirectory as opposed to a subdomain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites. The primary argument seems to be that the search engines view the subdomain as a separate entity from the domain and therefore, the subdomain doesn't benefit from any of the trust rank, quality scores, etc. Rand made a comment that seemed like the subdomain could SOMETIMES inherit some of these factors, but didn't expound on those instances. What determines whether the search engine will view your subdomain hosted microsite as part of the main domain vs. a completely separate site? I read it has to do with the interlinking between the two.
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0