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.
H1 tag- on home page - what is it best to include
-
is it best to have in the H1 tag
1. just our website address
2. combination of website address followed by short keywords about our website
-
It's depends upon your SEO strategy. Search engines give much weight to the H1 Tag. I vote for your second option : Site Name + Some Important Keyword.
-
Using the words of a great SEOer... Annielytics:
"Search engines use the H1 tag to interpret what a page is about, much the same way readers of a magazine use article titles to get an idea of what an article is about. When pages are missing H1 tags, it’s harder for both visitors and search engines to decipher what the page is about. The H1 tag should contain a judicious use of the keyword(s) you’re targeting the page for. Be careful to make the language natural and not keyword stuffed. If you have to decide between user experience and SEO, go with user experience."
I would just concentrate on using the H1 tag to add value to the users experience. I guess they will already know that they are on your website, so no need to remind them of this in the H1. As Annie mentions above, use it like you would if it was an article in a magazine. You wouldn't repeat the magazine name within an article title already in the magazine.
also, the 'beginners guide' link that Matt Roney has shared is a great resource!!
Hope that helps!
-
I can't think of a reason to include your website address in an H1 tag at all. H1 is intended to indicate the topic of the content on a page; it functions as a headline similarly to how a headline on a newspaper page works. That's why it's a somewhat decent place to place keywords—it indicates to search engines what the page is about.
For a homepage, I'd recommend using your brand name, in text. If there are other relevant keywords, use them as long as it appears natural and informative to visitors. But actually placing your URL in an H1 is unlikely to have any value for you.
You might want to check out the Beginner's Guide to SEO. This Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO could help, too.
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
-
H1 tag positioning impact
Hello, I am currently working with a dev team to develop a new site. We have designed the title tags to sit below a banner image on each page but the technical team are insisting the h1 title tags must come above the banner for maximum SEO impact. I am sceptical about this, can anybody please shed some light and/or share any up to date resource on this? I have attached a side by side wireframe to illustrate the pages with the h1 tags in both positions. Thank you! HnWcLTx
On-Page Optimization | | Popidev0 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Break in H1 tag - big, small or no problem?
Hi, I've just taken on a new ski client who offers ski instructor courses. The landing page for the keyword [ski instructor courses] was created by the web agency but with no heading tags... http://www.snowrehab.com/ski-instructor-courses Subsequently they've put them in but I've noticed the H1 tag has a break in it where 'ski' is on a separate line to 'instructor courses' Is this an issue that need to be addressed? Also I can't look up the page in the Moz on-page grader - any ideas why? Many thanks! Richard
On-Page Optimization | | richardpatey0 -
What is on page links?
Hi - i would like to know exactly what an on page link is? i understand the linking system however cant work what exactly what an on page link is? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | OasisLandDevelopment0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Does Title Tag have to be in the HEAD tag?
We are using templates that load the same header for every page. I'd like to just include a different title tag in the "body" template of each page. If I was to do this, does it affect SEO at all?
On-Page Optimization | | moziodavid0 -
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?
On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion0