Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable Content Briefs
      Moz Pro

      Turn SEO data into actionable Content Briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Is single H1 tag still best practice?

    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.

    Is single H1 tag still best practice?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    6
    5
    47738
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • kayl87
      kayl87 last edited by

      Hi Guys,

      Is having a single h1 tag still best practice for SEO?

      Guessing multiple h1 tags dilute the value of the tag and keywords within the tag.

      Thoughts?

      Cheers.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KMBirdsong
        KMBirdsong last edited by

        That's just laziness on their part, they should update to have an H1 on every page.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • predmantps
          predmantps last edited by

          MOZ site crawl indicated we had missing H1’s as well as the canonical tags on almost all of our pages. We work with a website company that has been building their websites from many years ago, but they have very useful tools for printers. They seem to have everything listed as H2's. I was told it would take a lot of effort on their part to make the H1’s. Are H2's sufficient?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • nhhernandez
            nhhernandez last edited by

            From what I read here, the use of multiple H1 tags depends on what 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. HTML5 uses the new semantic elements like

            <header>and

            <footer>to work out the hierarchy, with headings only affecting hierarchy within one of those tags.

            Source: https://moz.com/community/q/how-will-it-effect-seo-to-have-multiple-h1-tags-on-a-page

            </footer>

            </header>

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • GastonRiera
              Gaston Riera last edited by

              Hi there!

              There are some theories that include a single H1 as a best practice.
              Although, a few months ago, google said that its just fine to have several H1 tags.
              My site's template has multiple H1 tags - Google Webmasters Youtube Channel

              Of course, those multiple H1 tags must be correctly used. Google does understand those tags and comprehends whether are correctly used. Try using h2, h3 or other, as long as the content requieres them.
              Your principal concern should be creating exceptional content, not having more than one H1 tag.

              Hope it helps.
              Best luck.
              GR

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • bgvsiteadmin

                SEO friendly H1 tag with 2 text lines

                Hi everyone, I am trying to add span tags in H1, break tag on 2 lines and style each line of H1 differently: Example: Line 1Line 2 I might add a smaller font for line 2 as well... Is this SEO friendly? Will crawlers read entire text or can interfere and block it. Thank you!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
                0
              • Rhythm_Agency

                What are the best practices for geo-targeting by sub-folders?

                My domain is currently targeting the US, but I'm building out sub-folders that will need to geo-target France, England, and Spain. Each country will have it's own sub-folder, and professionally translated (domain.com/france). Other than the hreflang tags, what are other best practices I can implement? Can Google Webmaster tools geo-target by subfolder? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Justin

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rhythm_Agency
                0
              • CostumeD

                On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile

                We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD
                0
              • SWD.Advertising

                Best practice for H1 on site without H1 - Alternative methods?

                I have recently set up a mens style blog - the site is made up of articles pulled in from a CMS and I am wanting to keep the design as clean as possible - so no text other than the articles. This makes it hard to get a H1 tag into the page - are there any solutions/alternatives? that would be good for SEO? The site is http://www.iamtheconnoisseur.com/ Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising
                0
              • RG_SEO

                Best server-side sitemap generators

                I've been looking into sitemap generators recently and have got a good knowledge of what creating a sitemap for a small website of below 500 URLs involves. I have successfully generated a sitemap for a very small site, but I’m trying to work out the best way of crawling a large site with millions of URLs. I’ve decided that the best way to crawl such a large number of URLs is to use a server side sitemap, but this is an area that doesn’t seem to be covered in detail on SEO blogs / forums. Could anyone recommend a good server side sitemap generator? What do you think of the automated offerings from Google and Bing? I’ve found a list of server side sitemap generators from Google, but I can’t see any way to choose between them. I realise that a lot will depend on the type of technologies we use server side, but I'm afraid that I don't know them at this time.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO
                0
              • veezer

                HTML5 Nav Tag Issue - Be Aware

                In checking my internal links with GWT, it is apparent that links within the nav tag in HTML5 are discounted by Google as "internal links" This could have major repercussions for designing your internal link structure for SEO purposes. I was surprised to see this result, as I have never seen it discussed. Anyone else notice this, or have any alternative views?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | veezer
                0
              • bonusjonathan

                Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...

                Hey guys, My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake! Ok, here's the deal... I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35). Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page ! So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags): Will google re-index the page with some good linking? Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year? I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links? Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back? Thanks and Regards, Amod

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonusjonathan
                0
              • jorgediaz

                Canonical Tag and Affiliate Links

                Hi! I am not very familiar with the canonical tag. The thing is that we are getting traffic and links from affiliates. The affiliates links add something like this to the code of our URL: www.mydomain.com/category/product-page?afl=XXXXXX At this moment we have almost 2,000 pages indexed with that code at the end of the URL. So they are all duplicated. My other concern is that I don't know if those affilate links are giving us some link juice or not. I mean, if an original product page has 30 links and the affiliates copies have 15 more... are all those links being counted together by Google? Or are we losing all the juice from the affiliates? Can I fix all this with the canonical tag? Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.